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DEDICATION 



LANCASTER MEMORIAL HALL. 



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ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



chtaxhan of Itnitorial lall, f awasta, 



June 17, If 



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By CHRISTOPHER T. THAYER; 



ODE, 



By H. F. BU8WELL. 



mitl) an gippenliii. 



BOSTON: 

NICHOLS AND NO YES, 

117, Washington Street. 

1868. 






Va"\v>1 



ADDRESS. 



My Friends, — For such I feel that I may address you, one 
and all, — here in this charming valley, surrounded by those 
hills" over which are drawn waving lines of beauty, crowned 
queen among the valleys with living green and golden sun- 
shine, we have met together ; some to whom this is their first 
and only home, others having here their chosen residence, 
some returning to the loved place of their nativity, others who 
have here taught or studied and hved, others still comparatively 
strangers; yet all of us attracted by objects that themselves 
bind us in common ties, and make us one in mutual regard and 
friendship. 

It has been said of some of our States, that they were good 

places in which to be born, but not to live. But even the 

stranger, as he looks upon these lovely scenes, must admit that 

this is a goodly land in which to dwell ; and that he must be hard 

to please, if not guilty of great ingratitude, who cannot here find 

a happy abode. For my own part, I must say — pardon me, if 

it be egotistically — that, though my lot has been mostly cast in 

some of the pleasantest places by the sea, and for a long period 

amid many of the most beautiful and interesting regions across 

the ocean and in the old world, I can truly and from the heart 

say, — 

" Where'er I roam, whatever reahns to see, 
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee," — 

To thee, the home of my infancy and youth, where first I 
breathed the breath of life, on which my eyes first opened, and 

2 



10 



on which they have never ceased to rest with delight. And 
now, through the public spirit, generosity, and excellent taste 
of the citizens, has been added to it the new charm of a 
noble memorial of the patriotic dead, coupled with an in- 
tellectual mine of inexhaustible and immeasurable wealth, 
which shall improve and bless the present and succeeding 
generations. 

The interest taken in this enterprise is indicated and testified 
to by the numbers I now see before :ne. Probably, on no for- 
mer occasion has so large an audience been assembled on this 
green, unless it were when Lafayette, our country's great bene- 
factor, was welcomed as the nation's guest. The arch under 
which he was received was but an emblem of that in the heart 
of the whole country, spanning, like the vault of heaven, the 
entire land. Many present, I am sure, will agree with me in 
wishing that the clear, deep, sonorous voice which gave him 
welcome, that of the minister of tliis church, the only place of 
worship at that time iu the town, might be heard here and 
now. Certain I am, that, if heard at all, it would be uttered 
in entire accordance with the purposes of this assembling, and 
would be in tones of rejoicing that any of his children should 
take a part, however humble, on this occasion. 

Two objects are embraced in it. The first is to dedicate a 
suitable and grateful memorial of your brave fellow-citizens, 
who at their country's call, and in the ardor of patriotic impulse, 
went forth from among you, life in hand, ready to peril life 
and all they held dear on earth, to do and die, and actually did 
lay down their own lives for the saving of that of the nation. 
This is in singular and beautiful harmony with the call which 
within a few weeks has sounded through the length and breadth 
of our land ; and been instinctively, as it were, and so cordially 
and universally responded to, for decorating with flowers the 
graves of soldiers and heroes fallen in the great civil conflict 
through which we have lately passed. A spirit like that ex- 
pressed in the lines of one of England's most gifted poets, Mrs, 
Hemans, seems in response to that call to have possessed the 
hearts of our people : — 



11 



" Bring flowers, pale flowers, o'er the bier to shed, 
A crown for the brow of the early dead. 
For this through its leaves hath the white rose burst, 
For this in the woods was the violet nursed. 
Though they smile in vain for what once was ours, 
They are love's last gift : bring ye flowers, pale flowers." 

The general burst of enthusiasm with which the sacred rite 
was performed, answered well to the glowing words, in which 
General Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Repub- 
lic, in an order designating the thirtieth day of May last, for 
strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating, the graves of 
comrades who died in defence of their country, says, '•' If other 
eyes grow dull, and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in 
the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and 
warmth of life remain to us. Let us then, at the time appoint- 
ed, gather around their sacred remains, and garland the passion- 
less mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring- 
time ; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from 
dishonor ; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges 
to aid those whom they have left among us, a sacred charge 
upon a nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and 
orphan." 

I rejoice that similar demonstrations of feeling and taste were 
made for those who were arrayed and fell in the hostile ranks. 
Though foes for a time, they yet were our countrymen, our 
fellow-countrymen. Some of them were forced into a service, 
which at heart they despised and detested ; others being de- 
luded by bad counsels, or swayed by prejudice, or acting and 
fighting from honest and strong conviction ; while others there 
may have been, and I think were, actuated by ambitious, selfish, 
cruel motives, to whose names, however we may forgive them 
in our hearts or commend them to the mercy of God, will ad- 
here a cleaving curse. Still the late floral solemnities are to be 
rejoiced in, as indicating progress in real sentiment and refined 
taste. Whether observed in relation to victors or vanquished, 
they may be hailed as harbingers of a brighter and better day, 
when the amenities and arts of peace shall be cultivated and 



12 



exercised, and higher refinement and elevation of character be 
attained. My friend Professor Russell, Avhom for all but "the 
critic's eye " I am happy to see with us to-day, many years ago, 
— neither he nor myself might care to say definitely how many, — 
in one of his elocutionary lessons (from Avhich, if all his pupils 
had been as apt to learn as he was to teach, you might at this time 
be gainers), remarked, that a great defect in the American 
mind was a want of emotional cultivation. In his native Scot- 
land, he said, it was common for parents, even the inhabitants 
of humble cottages, to call forth their children to admire and 
receive permanent and deep impressions of the beauties and 
sublimities of nature. Not so was it then with us. But, while 
there has since been an improved appreciation of what is inter- 
esting and exciting in natural objects, dull and slow of heart 
must we have been, if, amid all the stirring, trying scenes 
through which in the last few years we have passed, we have 
not had our souls moved to their lowest deeps, and had a 
depth and power of emotion, patriotic, moral, and religious, 
to which before we were utter strangers. This anniversary of 
the ever-memorable battle of Bunker Hill, so fraught with 
strong, patriotic, and, if rightly viewed, pious emotion, has been 
most appropriately selected for these commemorative and dedi- 
catory services. Many circumstances combined to render that 
battle a grand event and turning point in the history, not of our 
country only, but of the world. Considered merely as a mili- 
tary drama, it was one of the most dramatic ever presented to 
human view. As, lately, I stood on an elevation overlooking 
the principal scenes connected with it, and recurred in thought 
to what they who stood there on the 17th of June, 1775, must 
have witnessed, I was struck anew with the impression that, for 
grandeur and eff'ect, it could scarcely, if ever, have been ex- 
ceeded. There, on that height, which, for what was suffered and 
achieved, may well be to us a Mount of remembrance, was the 
small band, — behind intrenchments, which like Jonah's gourd 
had sprung up in a night, — assailed by deadly missiles from bat- 
teries and vessels of Avar. Then there were mustering of troops 
on Boston Common, and marching to the points of embarka- 



13 



tion, and gathering on the eastern point of the peninsula of 
Charlestown, all clad in brilliant military trappings and burn- 
ished armor. All the surrounding dwellings and hill-tops, 
meanwhile, Avere crowded with earnest, anxious spectators of 
the great tragedy to be enacted. Forward ! the order was given, 
when the proud host advanced ; and at the moment of assured 
triumph they were met by a reserved fire, which, while con- 
signing many brave officers and men to their last account, pro- 
duced a recoil which even the bravest could not withstand. 
The discomfited were rallied, only to be again driven back 
Avith dreadful shedding of blood and loss of life. Once more, 
with ranks rc-inforced and vastly superior numbers, they re- 
turned to the charge and succeeded in driving from their in- 
trenchments those who, with exhausted ammunition, could only 
resist them with the butts of their muskets, and a resolute will. 
Meantime Charlestown had been fired by the enemy, and the 
flames and smoke and crackling of fires mingled with the over- 
hanging clouds and awful din of battle. For miles around this 
scene of smoke and flame, and dread conflict was beheld; and 
where not seen, was heard and felt in the roar of musketry and 
cannon, so as to be accounted, especially with the great issues 
impending, among the most impressive events of Avar. 

On that literally " high place of the field," many good and 
brave men acted and fell. From this toAvn one, David Rob- 
bins, Avas killed on the spot ; and another, Robert Phelps, died 
of his Avounds soon after the battle. But then and there, chief 
among the sacrifices laid on the altar of their country, was 
General Joseph Warren. Distinguished in his youth by fine 
physical and mental endowments, the youth Avas significant of 
the man. There is a tradition, received from some of the 
older inhabitants, in Avhich I am confirmed by one here present, 
Avho is not likely to be found at fault in traditionary lore, that 
during his collegiate course at Cambridge, he taught a district 
school of this toAvn. Certain it is, that at the age of nineteen 
years he Avas appouitcd master of the grammar school in Rox- 
bury, Avhich he conducted with marked success. By education a 
scholar, by profession a physician, fitted by natural and acquired 



14 

gifts to be eminent and successful in the profession of his choice, 
and having actually attained honorable distinction in it, he was 
impelled by his ardor as a patriot, and the claim urged by his 
fellow-countrymen on his acknowledged and great abilities, to 
devote himself mainly to the absorbing civil interests of the 
time. The superiority he displayed in these, as in other 
respects, is sufficiently proved by the remark of John Adams, 
that he regarded him, and his compatriot, Josiah Quincy, as 
two of the ablest and most accomplished men then living. On 
the 5th of March, 1775, the anniversary of the Boston mas- 
sacre, which was celebrated in the Old South meeting-house, 
he was the orator. Eevolutionary discussions, agitations, and 
events were rapidly approaching a crisis. Just as the exercises 
were about commencing, the patriot, Samuel Adams, of whom 
with good reason it has been affirmed, that he, more than any 
other man, commanded our nation into existence, who pre- 
sided, was informed, in tones of hurry and alarm, that many 
British officers were at the doors, viewing themselves, no doubt, 
in duty bound to preserve peace and order, and guard against, 
and, if need be, suppress, sedition and rebellion. With the 
utmost calmness and urbanity he replied, "Invite the gentlemen 
in ; " at the same time ordering that the front seats should be 
cleared for their accommodation. Not feeling at liberty to 
decline so bland an invitation, in they came ; and there they 
sat in the midst of that vast and crowded assembly, listening in 
all probability to as close preaching as ever issued from the Old 
South pulpit. Warren commenced his oration by announcing 
as his subject, " The Danger of Standing Armies in Time of 
Peace," — a rather bold announcement, considering that Boston 
was then in the possession of British troops, stationed there to 
overawe and keep in subjection her own and the neighboring 
populations. And undaunted by the hisses of opponents and 
foes, nor unduly elated and tempted to extravagance by the 
cheers of friends, — for with one or other of these salutations was 
he repeatedly and often met, — ■ he discussed his theme with 
a self-possession, thoroughness, and power of eloquence wdiich 
placed him in the front rank of orators, patriots, and brave 



15 



men. Altogether, this scene may be viewed as a fitting prelude 
to the actual hostilities which, little more than a month later, 
opened on the plains of Lexington and Concord. 

Yet the hour of his departure and sacrifice was at hand. 
His few remaining months and days were passed amid most 
exciting scenes and momentous events, and were filled to the 
full with duties performed, with high and varied usefulness. 
On committees for sustaining and carrying on the war. President 
of the Provincial Assembly, then appointed major-general in 
the army, the amount of duty discharged, the ascendency ac- 
quired, the influence exerted, by this young man, who at his 
death was not much more than thirty years of age, may fairly 
be accounted among the marvels of civil and political history. 

When it Avas apparent that the British general (Gage) had 
resolved on forthwith driving the Americans from their position 
on Charlestown heights, the gallant Major Brooks — afterward 
distinguished in fiercely contested fields during the Revolution, 
and since for years the greatly respected and beloved Governor 
of Massachusetts, whom many of us beheld and remember as a 
model of grace and dignity on yonder parade-ground, at the 
largest and most imposing military review ever held in this 
vicinity, to whose recital of thrilling incidents in the Revolu- 
tionary War, and especially in its first great battle, I have often 
listened with rapt interest — was despatched to headquarters at 
Cambridge to call for re-inforcements. These Warren ex- 
pressed a determination to join. To his friend Elbridge 
Gerry, who sought to dissuade him from so doing, and urgently 
remonstrated against his thus exposing his invaluable life, he 
simply, and as if with a presentiment of his fall, replied, 
" Dulce ct decorum est pro patria mori^^ — sweet and glorious 
is it to die for one's country. Similar in expression, showing a 
like determined and self-sacrificing spirit, and in some of its 
terms strikingly applicable to the nature of our late civil strife, 
was this declaration of an Essex-County convention, in Septem- 
ber of the previous year : " Though above all things, slavery 
excepted, we deprecate the evils of a civil war ; though we are 
deeply anxious to restore and preserve harmony with our breth- 



16 

ren in Great Britain ; yet, if the despotism and violence of our 
enemies should finally reduce us to the sad necessity, we, 
undaunted, are ready to appeal to the last resort of States ; and 
will, in support of our rights, encounter even death, sensible 
that he can never die too soon who lays down his life in sup- 
port of the laws and liberties of his country." 

Arrived on what was soon to be the field of desperate con- 
flict, the presence of Warren is hailed by the troops with shouts 
of joy and triumph, and imparts a magic impulse to that de- 
voted band of citizen and patriot soldiers. There he stands 
and moves, resplendent in manly beauty and vigor, in exalted 
feeling and sublime heroism, with the " rose of heaven on his 
cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye." The veteran Colonel 
Prescott hastens to greet him, and, in deference to his superior 
rank, offers him the chief command. But no : that he posi- 
tively declines. He has come to obey, not to direct ; to learn, 
from veterans of larger experience and former wars, — and from 
no truer or more valiant officers and men could he learn, — to 
serve in the ranks, and share with the common soldier the 
perils and glories there to be met or acquired. Through 
the surging waves of the awful succeeding conflict, he is cour- 
ageous, firm, ever on the alert, and most eff'ective. And at 
the sounding of a retreat, because of exhausted ammunition 
and overpowering numbers, he is among the last to retire, and 
receives the fatal wound by which he is placed among the high- 
est on the list of our country's martyrs and benefactors. 

Let me now for a moment ask your attention to the remarka- 
ble providences through which, by a singular inversion, defeat 
was turned to victory, and ever since has been celebrated as 
such. In a mere military point of view, I believe it is admitted 
by those best capable of judging, that decided mistakes were 
committed on both sides. The Americans had stationed them- 
selves on a peninsula connected with the main land by a narrow 
isthmus, Avhich was enfiladed, and, to a great extent commanded, 
by the fire of British vessels, — so that they must incur extreme 
danger, if not starvation and capture. On the other hand, the 
British, by venturing a direct attack, were liable to, and actually 



17 

did, suffer immense loss ; whereas, if they had bided their time, 
they could, with the forces they had at command on land and 
water, have compelled to retreat, or reduced to surrender, 
those of the Americans. Not so was it in the divine counsels. 
Man proposes, but God disposes. On a warm Saturday after- 
noon in June, the flower of the British army sallied forth from 
the metropoUs, flushed with anticipations of an easy triumph 
over hastily gathered and undisciplined troops; but before 
nightfall they were in the midst of one of the bloodiest trage- 
dies, in proportion to the numbers engaged, ever enacted in 
modern warfare, and themselves by far the greatest losers and 
sufferers. The consequence was, that the patriot army was 
inspired by the results of the contest with new confidence 
in their prowess, and renewed assurance of ultimate success and 
triumph. Moreover, the blood of the martyred heroes cried 
from the ground. Warren, their chief's name, alone, was a 
talisman to rouse and sway the hearts of his countrymen. As 
the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church ; as by the 
greatest sacrifice men have been prompted to become living 
sacrifices and holy offerings, — so the blood, shed in the solemn 
and momentous scene we have now contemplated, had a living 
power to move to the high resolution and persistent endeavor, 
that it should not have been spilt in vain. 

Like providences have been known in our recent experience. 
Thrillingly have they been recognized by not a few among us. 
I do not mean to intimate that Providence does not work, is not 
ruling and overruling, in the midst of all events and human 
affairs. Still it may be admitted, that the divine hand and 
agency are more manifested, more peculiarly and strongly 
marked, in some of them than in most others. Take, for 
instance, the first overt act of violence and military demonstra- 
tion in the late rebellion. It was not the disproportion of 
numbers between the little band that defended Fort Sumter, 
and the hosts that besieged it, — though that took mighty hold 
of the general sympathy, — which wrought most deeply on the 
national heart. It was the dishonoring and bringing down of 
our country's flag ; which none of us till then, when, grasped 



18 

by sacrilegious hands and foul treason, it was trailed in the dust, 
knew or felt how much we loved it, or realized the sublime 
meaning wrapped in its folds, — that it was the sacred sign and 
symbol, the living representative, as it were, of the union, in- 
tegrity, peace, prosperity, — the very life, — of the nation; of 
all the privileges and blessings in which as fellow-countrymen 
we rejoice and glory, and by which its name and existence 
are endeared to our souls. They who had thought to " fire the 
Southern heart," soon found another and a stronger one fired, — 
that, in place of the dragons' teeth they had sown, there sprung 
up hosts of armed men, ready at all hazards to sustain their 
country's cause, and answer in full accord to the all but inspired 
appeal of the patriotic poet, — 

" Stand by the flag, 
All doubt and treason scorning. 
Believe, witli courage lirni, and faith sublime, 
That it shall wave, 
Till the eternal morning 
Pales in its glories all the lights of time." 

So, in the ever-memorable passage through Baltimore on the 
19th of April, 1861, when victims from our own State and 
neighborhood were freely laid on the altar of liberty, Avhile 
on the way to save the ark of the nation's freedom, do we see 
the same guiding, providential hand. The coincidence in date 
was, of itself, a providence, — pointing in the same direction, 
and leading to the same grand result, as that of April 19, 
1775, and was not without strong effect on the public mind. 
He, the late Governor Andrew, under whom those victims 
were marshalled and sent forth on their blessed errand, who so 
touchingly directed their remains to be tenderly cared for and 
returned to the homes which their untimely fate had left deso- 
late, Avas in himself a providence. In him were Avonderfully 
combined sensibility, sagacity, administrative energy, and ability. 
Scenting treason, with its wiles and workings, from afar, he 
showed wisdom and true greatness in at once preparing to meet 
and repel it. Ever, amid so many other tokens of his credit 
and renown, will it be remembered to his honor, that, owing to 



19 



his foresight and efforts, Massachusetts troops, from nearly five 
hundred miles' distance, were the first to appear in defence of 
the capital. Not, as in one instance at least of ancient Kome, 
by the cackling of geese, but by the keen-sighted, true-hearted, 
indefatigable efforts of our citizens, — and foremost among them 
the honored, beloved, and, I grieve to add, lamented Andrew, — 
was the capital saved. 

Then there was the first battle in the War of the Rebellion, 
— that of Bull Run. Being in England at the time it occurred, 
I was under painful apprehensions of the tendencies of our 
affairs. Distance is said to lend enchantment, but may also to 
the humblest minds give correctness, to the view. The cry 
heard from some of the leading journals was, " On to Rich- 
mond ! " An insane furor was abroad, implying that advance 
only was necessary, and all would go well, and ignoring the 
artful and deeply laid schemes and actual talents and resources 
of the rebel chiefs. So that Avhen one evening, at the residence 
of our minister, Mr. Adams, the intelligence of the disastrous 
defeat which had befallen us came to me, it seemed rather as 
the bursting of an impending cloud, than an occasion for ex- 
treme surprise. Though not, in itself, calculated to favor deep 
sleep, I slept upon it as well as I could. And the next morning 
I had come to the conclusion which, if not the most gratifying to 
national pride, Avas the most comforting and the best of which 
the circumstances admitted ; and that was, that the mortifying 
disaster was a necessary and salutary discipline, which would 
only tend to rouse the supporters of the Union to more definite 
and strenuous efforts for its preservation. In one faith I then as 
never faltered, — that the union of these States must and would 
be preserved. Swiss said to me, " Are we, the little lone re- 
public of Europe, to be left altogether solitary and alone ; and 
you, the great one, to Avhich we have looked as model, guide, 
and guardian, to be dissolved and melt into thin air 1 " Italians 
asked, " Is your great nation to be sundered into North and 
South, if not an indefinite number of fragments, while Ave are 
struggling to bring our glorious old peninsula to one political 
faith, and under one consolidated and benisrn government ? " 



20 



Germans, too, striving for the concentration of magnificent 
powers, which had been frittered and all but thrown away and 
annihilated by division and subdivision, and which have since 
been, and are now in process of being, so nobly concentrated 
and maintained, exclaimed, with a feeling akin to despair, "Are 
all our theories of unity false ? all our strivings for it vain ? Is 
it altogether a hollow and sad delusion ? " Frenchmen there 
were, who expressed cordial sympathy with our countrymen in 
the distractions and trials through which they were passing ; 
but many of the same nation -went hand in hand, heart in 
heart, with their Emperor in his covert, but poorly concealed, 
hostility to our Union ; by which, and in the spirit of which, he, 
taking advantage of our civil commotions, sought — ill-fated 
and disastrous though the effort proved — to erect an empire in 
Mexico ; which, if not absolutely annexed to the Southern 
would-be Confederacy, should be nearly allied to that ; both of 
them being under his domination, and both opposed to the prog- 
ress of our free republican institutions. Englishmen, — what 
shall I say of them, our kinsmen and brethren, dwellers in our 
father-land ? Some of them Avith tears in their eyes, and, I 
doubt not, from the depths of their souls, deplored the calami- 
ties under which we were struggling, national life and death 
being held in the balance. Ever is it to be recorded to the 
honor and glory of the workingmen of England, that at all 
risks, even that of starvation for themselves and their families, 
they stood up without faltering and inflexibly for wdiat they 
clearly discerned Avas not more the cause of union than of free- 
dom. This they did, with a common sense and right feeling, 
which afford strong grounds of hope and satisfaction in the 
future ; notwithstanding the Prime Minister, Palmerston, in 
the Commons, and the Foreign Secretary, Kussell, in the House 
of Lords, had declared our condition hopeless, and our union of 
States irrevocably sundered ; notwithstanding lords and gentry 
and many others fully believed in the dissolution of that union, 
and large commercial interests were joined -with rebels against 
it, in committing depredations on our commerce, by which it was 
sorely crippled and threatened with annihilation even ; though 



21 



a day of reckoning is at hand, as sure as any event of national 
policy can be, in which I trust just recompense to the uttermost 
farthing will be rigorously insisted on. But, amid all question- 
ings and forebodings in that hour of severe and dread crisis for 
our country, I had but one opinion, one reply, one confidence ; 
which substantially was, that whatever the difficulties, dangers, 
vicissitudes through which we had to pass, — and they might be 
various and multiform, — we should come out the brighter and 
better, more free, prosperous, and happy for the trials we had 
endured. And with something of exultation may I ask. Is it 
not so ? or is it not so to be ? 

Another incident, marvellous in itself and considered merely 
as a coincidence, but illustrative of the wonderful providence 
by which through direst straits we Avere carried on, occurred at 
the mouth of the Chesapeake, in the vicinity of what proved 
to be our last strong fortress, ]Monroe. When the iron-clad 
" Merrimac," wrought with cunning art and amazing device by 
our foes, had wreaked death and destruction on a portion of the 
fleet anchored there, in a single day, and only waited the return 
of morning to devour as a Leviathan of the deep all the rest, 
there appeared in the distance, no larger than a man's hand and 
scarcely visible above the water, an angel of deliverance, a new 
invention and mere experiment, yet destined to work a complete 
revolution in naval warfare, the -' Monitor," under command of 
the heroic, self-sacrificing, and all but sacrificed, Worden. At 
dawn of day, as the monster came, bent on and sure of his prey, 
he was met like the eagle by the king-bird, like Goliath by David, 
an apparently insignificant, but ultimately victorious, antagonist. 
And, before the setting of the sun, he had retired to his hiding- 
place, to be no more seen or known, or, at most, to be counted 
among the things past and gone. 

The prolongation of the War of the Rebellion is to be re- 
garded as among the leadings of a kind and merciful Provi- 
dence. Heavily as it bore upon us, deeply wounded and 
grieved as we were to give up, in behalf of our country's liber- 
ties, one after another, Avhole hecatombs, indeed, of our bravest 
and best, some of us saw then, and all must now see, that it was 



22 

good for us to have been thus afflicted. Surely it was no mean 
sacrifice, and equally sure is it that it was for no unworthy 
ends. By that delay and those prolonged trials, our people 
were brought to a true and exact comprehension of the real 
state of affairs, to realize that it was not the preservation of the 
Union, but the abominable and ever-to-be-execrated institution 
of human slavery, which was the actual issue. Slow, cautious, 
heeding carefully constitutional provisions, by which some of 
the warmest friends of freedom were embarrassed, the executive 
at length, and none too soon, planted itself on the strong, im- 
pregnable ground of universal emancipation, as a military ne- 
cessity ; thus virtually wiping away the stripes, and leaving 
only the stars to adorn our country's banner. How meekly, 
wisely, and kindly the race held in bondage to downright slav- 
ery, or prejudice scarcely less absolute, in relation to whose fate 
the war was in fact raging, bore themselves ; how, when sum- 
moned to the contest, they were among the bravest and most 
valiant, neither you nor I need be told. History will sufficiently 
record their bravery, and attest their genuine worth. But the 
grand result — the placing of our political institutions on their 
original and legitimate basis, that of the free and equal rights 
of all men — is due to the protracted, painful, oft-times disheart- 
ening, but finally triumphant, struggle through which we have 
lately passed. Had our triumph been earlier, we should have 
triumphed less, if at all. Complete triumph was the only ade- 
quate assurance that the victory was worth having. Blessed 
be God, who gave us the victory, by which free institutions 
were vindicated, by which the down-trodden were raised up and 
delivered, and the free made free indeed ! 

One more providence I must, in consonance with my own 
convictions, mention, though it is in no partisan spirit that I al- 
lude to it. What I refer to is not the prolongation of the trials 
of war, but those of peace. When war had ceased, many 
vainly — and events have demonstrated most vainly — flattered 
themselves, that all was settled, and that we had only to sit 
down in happy tranquillity by still waters. But who, after such 
a war of elements, could reasonably expect a dead calm imme- 



23 



diately to ensue ? Certainly it has not. Rebellion may have 
been subdued ; but the spirit of rebellion is not exorcised, nor, 
foul as it may be, is it likely soon to be driven out. Yet this 
painful suspense, this hope deferred and wofuUy disappointed, 
this placing at an indefinite distance the consummation of our 
fondest wishes for ourselves and our country's consolidation and 
welfare, — all these I fully believe to be fraught with real solid, 
lasting advantage. A space has thus been afforded for digging 
about and rendering more safe the foundations of our union and 
our liberties. Securities, which otherwise might have been 
overlooked and neglected, have been brought to view ; and the 
whole fabric has been, or is in process of being, strengthened 
and beautified. 

We come now, and after longer preliminaries, perhaps, than I 
ought to have indulged in, to the notice more particularly of 
those who gave themselves heart, soul, body, and estate, to their 
country's cause in her late extremity. All honor be paid to the 
thousands, hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, thus devoted 
and faithful ! Not on the tented field only was such devotion 
shown, but at the fireside and in the family circle, made solitude 
by the absence of the dearly loved and how many lost ! Heavy 
indeed were the burdens borne by multitudes, — pecuniarily 
burdensome, — but not to be mentioned in comparison with the 
load of care, anxiety, often despair, which weighed on the over- 
burdened heart. Woman ! how she loomed an anoel of liaht 
amid the lowering clouds and the surrounding darkness ! Flor- 
ence Nightingales sprang up as by enchantment, and whether 
in hospital, camp, or tlie very field of battle, doing no dishonor 
to the name. Others there were, who in less exposed positions 
did good and not less material service. One I well know and 
delight to honor, — and so well known I need not name, — who, 
foregoing the charms of the most cultivated society, resigning 
the peace and domestic comfort so congenial to mature life, gave 
herself, her time, her labors and means, for four long years, 
wholly up to generous sympathy with, and supplying the needs 
of, patriot soldiers ; so establishing a most desirable place, not 



24 

only ill their hearts, but in that of this whole community. With 
such instances in view, well may we exclaim, — 

" In the great history of the land, 
A noble type of good, 
Heroic womanhood ! " 

Special honor ought we to give to them who, buckling on 
their armor, went forth to the fight, and bravely meeting the 
chances of war, yet survive to gladden our hearts by their pres- 
ence. Let them be assured, that as live heroes they are not 
less honored than dead heroes. Gladly, honorably, with my 
deep reverence in which I am sure all around me will join, do 
we welcome their presence, as not that of the dead, but of the 
living, here to-day. And yet I am assured, that none more 
cordially join us in paying honors to the departed, in erecting 
and consecrating this memorial of their worth, this tribute to 
their precious memories. Much as we rejoice that your lives 
have been spared amid the perils through which in the mighty 
conflict they passed, scarcely less do we take joy and solace in 
the patriotic sympathy by which your tears are mingled with 
ours in these commemorative rites. 

You of this town, who bared your breasts to all the dangers 
of the late tremendous conflict, and courageously rushed to the 
deadly breach, let me say here, showed yourselves worthy suc- 
cessors of those whose names, running through the long line of 
more than two centuries, have been distinguished in the defence 
of their homes, or their country and her liberties. It was in no 
aggressive spirit, no violent wresting from the aboriginal posses- 
sors, but by purchase mutually agreed to be just and equitable, 
that these fair and fertile vales and hills, these beautiful groves 
and woodlands, intersected as by silver threads with streams of 
living water, came into the possession of the first English set- 
tlers. They named it Lancaster, after the shire town of one of 
the largest and most opulent counties of England, remarkable 
for its beautiful and commanding position, in which, especially 
in its old cemetery, are found names, familiar here, that indicate 
not mere fancy, but native and dearly cherished associations in 



25 

the selection of the name. For years, this was a frontier settle- 
ment, of decided prominence for its position, and also for its 
extent ; comprising as it did what with itself now includes the 
territory of nine different towns. At first all seemed peaceful 
and prosperous, and the surrounding tribe of savages of so 
gentle a nature as to be so only in name. But under King 
Philip's combinations, with his deadly determination to extermi- 
nate the whites, the scene was wholly changed. The popula- 
tion was thrown into garrisons, and the garrisons became centres 
of war and siege. In one attacked in February, 1676, were 
over fifty persons, nearly half of whom were killed, and the 
rest, with the first minister's wife, carried, with her dying child, 
into all but hopeless captivity, from which happily she was res- 
cued. Your second minister. Whiting, was killed in conflict 
with Indians ; and your third, by a sentry, mistaking him for 
an Indian foe; both falling and dying on the now attractive 
park of Colonel Fay. Strange, most unnatural, it seems, that 
the smoke and lurid clouds of battle should hover over, and 
the din of war be echoed from, the mild atmosphere of this 
peaceful and charming valley. Not only so, but hence have 
gone forth others, and not in defence of themselves alone, but 
for others' relief. Simon Willard, your own townsman, — whom 
I regard as among the magnates, the chiefs and leaders of the 
land, ancestor of two Presidents of Plarvard College, and a 
posterity — in which is included Joseph Willard, your historian, 
and long your worthy fellow-citizen — of which any one might 
be proud ; Major of Middlesex of which this was then a part, 
and holding a command in the miHtia second only to that of the 
chief executive, — sprang at the first call to the rescue of the be- 
leaguered settlements on our Western border, and, though at 
the age of threescore and ten, effected their entire deliverance. 
In the subsequent wars with the French and Indians, the men 
of Lancaster bore their full part of duty and bravery. Among 
them was Colonel Abijah Willard, descendant of the first of 
that name just mentioned, who commanded a regiment in what 
has long been termed " the old French War ; " himself honored 
for his public and private services, and foUoAved by worthy rep- 

4 



26 

resentatives down to this time. An adjutant of his regiment 
was Samuel Ward, one of the most remarkable men, not of 
this place only, but of any place where his abode might have 
been fixed. Born in Worcester, he at the early — premature I 
should rather say — age of sixteen years, enlisted as a private 
in the army, and, before completing his twentieth year, rose to 
be adjutant. He was at the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown 
Point by the forces under General Amherst in 1759, and of 
Isle mix Noix and Montreal in IT 60. Soon after the war, he 
came here, engaged in mercantile business, held various offices 
in toAvn and State; and up to the last of his life, prolonged as 
it was to eighty-seven years, he was distinguished as a supporter 
of good institutions, for his acts of neighborly kindness and 
friendship, for a most liberal hospitality, and for a wit so ready 
and sparkling, a wisdom so keen and penetrating, a spirit so 
genial, diffusive, and magnetic, as to make his society ever wel- 
come and a delight to young and old alike, and give life and 
soul to any circle in which he moved. Hardly can we, who knew 
him well, expect to see his like again. 

A pleasant allusion of his to the early experience he had in 
war, here occurs to me. When the neighboring town of Fitch- 
burg, whose respectable representation we gladly hail to-day, 
was a mere village in a narrow valley, overshadowed by sur- 
rounding lofty hills, he used to say that on entering it he felt 
that he had got into camp. This, of course, was before that now 
enterprising and prosperous town — availing of its central posi- 
tion, exacting tribute and profit from every drop of water in 
the north branch of the Nashua, which here is permitted to 
flow in comparative freedom and beauty ; having no fear before 
its eyes of becoming a shire, with jails and convicts, and per- 
haps the multiplication of prosecutors and advocates, as our 
influential fathers of this place had when the same boon was 
offered to them; cherishing no feeble aspirations of being soon 
enrolled among the cities of the Commonwealth ; and spread- 
ing itself in pride and glory over all the neighboring heights — 
had forfeited all title to the similitude, and as now viewed had 
taken from the playful allusion, just referred to, its point and 
jest. 



27 

As we come down to the times of the Revohition, we find a 
highly honorable record of the part taken in it by the citizens 
of this town. Heavy drafts were made upon them for men and 
money, which, almost without exception, were met with cheerful 
alacrity. During the protracted contest, all the able-bodied 
men either served in the field, or were represented by substi- 
tutes. A few there were who, impressed with the idea that 
the conflict was an unequal one and likely to prove disastrous 
to this side, either withdrew^ from the country, or else main- 
tained, as far as was consistent with remaining in their homes, 
a cautious neutrality. With the greatest caution, however, and 
whatever the sacrifices which willingly or reluctantly they might 
make, those of a conservative cast were subjected to severe 
trials, and were obliged to encounter serious perils. "In June, 
1777," says your historian, " Colonel Asa Whitcomb was, in 
pursuance of a resolve of the General Assembly, chosen to col- 
lect evidence against such persons as shall be deemed internal 
enemies to the State. The names of a number of citizens were 
placed on the list, as being of that description, which were 
afterwards stricken off. It is related of Rev. Mr. Harrington, 
that when his name was added to the list, the venerable and 
truly excellent man bared his breast before his people and ex- 
claimed, ' Strike, strike here, with your daggers : I am a true 
friend to my country.' The passion for proscribing innocent 
persons soon subsided ; calmer and more thorough investigation 
by the Committee of Safety was substituted ; violence and riot 
were avoided ; and the spirit of liberty proved to be deeply 
rooted, and widely extended." 

One instance there was of shrinking from, or at least of hesi- 
tation to meet, the demands made for patriotic exertion and 
sacrifice. In June, 1780, a draft of forty men for six months' 
service was made upon the town. This was felt and openly 
declared by many stanch friends of independence and the 
Revolutionary cause, to be a demand and pressure beyond the. 
point of endurance. At a town meeting called to deliberate 
upon it, Josiah Kendall, " a flaming patriot and whig leader," 
opened the discussion by distinctly advocating non-compliance. 



28 

were it only on the ground of absolute exhaustion of both men 
and means. In this position he was sustained by other speakers, 
all well known as ardent patriots, professing and claiming as 
well as himself to express the general sentiment of the loyal 
inhabitants. The apparently even tenor of the deliberations 
was suddenly broken by a voice, coming unexpectedly as could 
a clap of thunder in a bright summer's noon. Th-at voice was 
from Samuel Ward, of whom just now I have spoken, who had 
fought bravely, successfully, and with merited distinction, in a 
former war, which was in fact the school in which many of the 
best officers and soldiers of the Revolution were trained, and 
whose courage, therefore, could not be questioned ; who yet, 
amid the notes of preparation and in the early stages of the 
conflict, doubted our ability to cope with the vast power, naval 
and military, of the mother country ; in which he coincided 
with not a few wise, good, and firm lovers and friends of our 
land, but for which his patriotism had come under the ban of 
suspicion and obloquy, and his name been inscribed even on the 
list of Tories, and foes of liberty and independence. Rising, 
with such antecedents and under such circumstances, amongst 
his assembled fellow-townsmen, thus abashed by the discour- 
agement of their leaders, and their thoughts led to ponder on 
a " lost cause," he was too astute, too fertile in expedients, 
too conscious of discernment of governing motives, and tact in 
directing them, not to be fully sensible that his hour had come 
for doing good service immediately to the State, and incidentally 
for himself and his own vindication. The very words, in which 
the appeal he then made was couched, may not with perfect 
exactness have been preserved ; but its tenor and substance 
have been faithfully transmitted, and may, though partially and 
imperfectly, be represented thus : — 

' Friends and fellow-citizens, we have arrived at a turning- 
point, a tremendous crisis, in the affairs of this town, in fact of 
our State and whole country. When the political leaders 
shrink from supporting the conflict, it would not be strange if 
their followers quailed and stood aghast. But I believe better 
things of you and the great body of my countrymen. If they 



29 



who assume to be leaders falter in patriotic determination and 
effort, others worthier and more resolute will be put in their 
stead. Just in proportion as they fall back, will the people 
come to the rescue, ready to contribute their last dollar, and 
perish in the last ditch. For after all, with the mass of the 
people, under God, rests the deciding of the mighty business we 
have in hand. Before we plunged into the surging waves of 
civil war, there was abundant room for doubts and hesitation, 
and I confess I was not without them. The time, however, for 
doubting has passed. Of this high and sacred cause may we 
say now, in the language used in relation to one yet higher and 
holier, He that doubteth is damned. True, we are in the 
midst of a sea red with blood ; but the only opening of escape 
from it which I can discern, is by forward, not retreating, steps. 
We are in for and fully committed to the fight, and base sub- 
jection is the only alternative to fighting it through. Shall it 
be, can it be, that all the blood and treasure, poured out like 
water in these five long years of deadly struggle, have been ex- 
pended for naught, and vastly worse than naught ? But they 
will not have been in vain, or worse than vain. Through the 
thick gloom on either side and before us, I see blessed rays of 
light and hope. The sympathy of foreign nations, especially 
the powerful French nation, is lending us practical and essen- 
tial aid. Our forces on land and sea, the soldiers and officers 
of our armies, — under their wise, prudent, virtuous, and val- 
iant chief, yet to be hailed as the saviour of his country, — have 
shown a power of enduring privation and hardship, a skill, 
bravery, and valor, and devotion to the support of our liberties, 
which I cannot doubt the God of battles, of the free and the 
enslaved alike, will crown with final and triumphant success. 

' Above all, the heart, the soul, the nerve of the people must, 
under an overruling Providence, be our principal defence and 
ground of reliance. Far, very far, were their fortitude in bear- 
ing the heavy burdens, truly grievous to be borne, which this 
war has imposed on them, — their courage to meet the inevitable 
trials and sacrifices to which by it they have been subjected, — 
their resources, mental, moral, and physical, which in its course 



30 



have been developed, — from being imagined in the outset. 
Even now, after the extended and trying experience through 
which we have passed, scarcely are imagined, still less fully 
understood, the vital force and reserved power for future exi- 
gencies residing in and forming a basis of permanent and 
strong confidence in the mass of the people. As one of them, 
and rather than that this requisition should not to the letter be 
met and answered, I solemnly declare on this spot and before 
this assembly, that my old and rusty armor, which has seen no 
small and some pretty hard service in the campaigns of a for- 
mer war, shall be reproduced and buckled on again ; and I will 
be enrolled and mustered among the men required by this im- 
mediate and pressing need of the country.' 

Following up this appeal by a carefully prepared plan, which 
Ward presented to the meeting, he showed conclusively that the 
requisition might and ought to be complied with, and carried it 
by an overwhelming majority, almost by acclamation. Great 
enthusiasm Avas excited throughout the town, and no exertions 
were spared to accomplish the object of the plan adopted. Re- 
cruits in goodly numbers were readily obtained, most of them, 
no doubt, inspired by self-devotion and love of country. One 
of them there was, of whom not quite as much could be af- 
firmed, who could hardly be said to have had a single eye to 
his country's good. It seems that he was possessed with a 
longing desire to acquire a lot of land constituting an important 
part of Deacon Moore's farm, and insisted, as a condition of his 
enlisting, on having that, though it was much more in value than 
the amount generally paid. " Take it," replied the deacon : "I 
had rather part with that land, which is the best I have, than 
lose the whole by my neglect in aiding the cause of my coun- 
try." Whether the soldier returned to possess and enjoy the 
recompense he demanded, or fell a victim of the war, does not 
appear, and may not admit of being learned. If the latter 
were the case, and known so to have been, we might be excused, 
should our sympathies be not quite as deeply moved by his fate 
as they might have been, had he been less grasping and exact- 
ing. At any rate, in one way or another, or in many ways, the 



31 

forty men required were enlisted, paid, and on their march to 
headquarters, within twelve days. Patriotism thus, then and 
here, gloriously triumphed. Not less complete was Ward's tri- 
umph over prejudice and threatened, if not actual, molestation. 
From what, in my younger days, I heard from the lips of aged 
men who Avere present in the assembly, — the deliberations, 
doings, and results of which I have just faintly sketched, — and 
variously otherwise have been informed, I am convinced that 
never, in all democracies, little or great, from those of Greece 
and Rome down to our own time, did a popular orator exercise 
a more skilful and absolute sway over a deliberative assembly 
than he did on that occasion. During the remaining years of 
the war, and ever afterward, as we may readily suppose, nei- 
ther his loyalty was impeached, nor his political orthodoxy 
questioned, nor were his person and property thereby en- 
dangered. 

Following close upon the termination of the Revolutionary 
struggle, were serious embarrassments and commotions. Public 
indebtedness, accumulated through the war, pressed heavily on 
the Confederacy, and the States of which it was composed. 
Private debtors and creditors were intermingled in seemingly 
hopeless and inextricable confusion. The general government, 
unable to discharge its own pecuniary obligations, was poorly 
situated for compelling the liquidation of others, in fact was 
wholly powerless so to do. Little if any better was the condi- 
tion of the several States included under it. Their courts 
might decree justice and demand payment ; but what did the 
decree or demand in effect amount to, where there was nothing 
to pay with, under a currency depreciated so as to be almost 
valueless, business of nearly all kinds sadly deranged and at a 
stand, and the resources for payment either tied up or entirely 
exhausted ? What but irritations between individuals and 
among communities, general uneasiness and disloyalty toward 
the civil authorities, and opposition, even to the extreme of 
determination on their overthrow, to the courts themselves ? 
At length, in 1786, only three years after the close of the war, 
these difficulties and disturbing causes culminated in downrisfht 



32 



rebellion here in our own State. Shays's Rebellion, to which I 
refer, — so called after the name o:^ the military commander at 
the head of it, — marks a most eventful crisis in our country's 
history. Even now, with all the light shed upon it by contem- 
poraneous and subsequent accounts, I doubt very much whether 
its interest and importance, and the bearings it had on our civil 
institutions, their establishment, progress, and beneficial results, 
have been duly appreciated. Occurring as it did in Massachu- 
setts, the head and front of resistance to British domination, 
which had commenced and taken the lead in carrying to a 
successful issue the Revolution, it spread dismay among the 
friends of order and good government, not only here, but 
throughout the country. They felt, not unnaturally, that if the 
demon of anarchy, Avild, consuming, destructive of all hopes of 
rational and well-guarded liberty, had taken possession of this 
old Pillar State, then might the advocates and supporters of 
republican freedom and union resign themselves to bitter disap- 
pointment, and fold their arms in utter despair. But it was not 
so to be. Our beloved Commonwealth, though shaken and 
tried, was not to be rent and shattered. Pioneer as she had 
been in liberty's cause, she was not to prove herself unworthy 
of that rank and title. Under the wise, virtuous, and energetic 
Bowdoin, her chief magistrate, was promptly organized in the 
eastern and more populous section of the State an overwhelm- 
ing military force, which, placed under command of General 
Lincoln, — whose practical wisdom, tried gallantry and skill, 
weight of character, and magnanimous spirit singularly fitted 
him to subdue, to negotiate M'ith, and conciliate, the disaffected, 
— at once marched into Western Massachusetts, where the 
rebellion had its seat, and soon eflfected its suppression. Quite 
a number from this town joined Lincoln's army, and served 
faithfully and bravely in it, which was the more creditable, 
from their vicinity to the infected district, and their additional 
exposure to contracting thence a taint of disloyalty. Though 
the rebellion had been thus subdued and had subsided, not so 
was it with the fears it had excited in the public mind. It had 
struck a chord of intense alarm, that vibrated far and wide and 



33 

long. Its lessons had sunk deep into the minds and hearts of 
the most thoughtful and discerning patriots throughout the 
country. That they were received and comprehended in their 
full force and meaning in our own State, where they had more 
immediately been taught, is indicated by the fact, that a citizen 
of it (" one Nathan Dane," as he was sneeringly styled by Hayne 
in his great debate with and defeat by Webster), being chairman 
of a committee of the old Congress, the year following, reported 
in favor of assembling the Convention by which the Federal 
Constitution was framed. Through those teachings, in no 
small part, were leading men all over the land made to realize 
the loose, broken, chaotic state in which the Revolution had 
left it ; to feel the absolute need of a central power, which, 
while sustained and deriving strensjth from the several divided 
and limited sovereignties, should with proper restrictions im- 
part vigor and extend its sway to them all, — the need of a 
supreme law of political gravitation, embracing within its reach 
and control all the individuals and people of the nation, that 
should, keeping the respective States in their apjjointed orbits, 
preserve them from being by internal dissensions rent asunder 
and scattered into innumerable fragments, make them at peace 
with each other, and, while independent each in its appro- 
priate sphere, maintain them in constituted harmony with and 
obedience to the general government. We — I so speak, for 
here I feel that we and you are convertible terms — may justly 
felicitate ourselves, that the people of this town, amid the diffi- 
culties and agitations of those trying six years which elapsed 
between the close of the war and the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, were thoroughly loyal to the cause of 
order and law. They cheerfully and fully met the demands 
made on them for military aid in its support. And none, 
more cordially than they, welcomed and sustained the new Con- 
stitution, as it went into operation under the guiding hand of 
Washington, — which almost at the outset showed itself suffi- 
ciently strong to suppress a formidable insurrection in Penn- 
sylvania, and has of late, in addition to all the intermediate and 
other blessings it has richly bestowed, proved adequate to scat- 

5 



34 



ter clouds of civil war as dense and dark, and suppressing a 
rebellion as mighty as — deemed by many not without reason 
the mightiest — the world ever saw. 

Coming down to the last war with Great Britain, — may it 
ever be the last, — that of 1812-15, we find an honorable 
record of the self-sacrificing patriotism of the inhabitants of this 
place. Throughout its continuance, the heavy burdens borne, 
the contributions exacted, the privations inevitable and bitter, 
the losses and sorrows necessarily incurred, were here submitted 
to, with more than resignation, rather with the heroic deter- 
mination to meet and bear all of them and, if need were, much 
more, — a resolution sustained and fortified by trust in God, 
and inspired, fired with ardent love of country. At the call 
for troops from this and the neighboring towns to defend the 
capital of our State from threatened invasion, the summons was 
responded to with alacrity. Individuals there were who from 
time to time off"ered themselves to serve in the field ; some of 
whom rose to high and merited distinction. Among such 
whom I recall to fresh recollection were Generals Henry and 
Fabius Whiting, — brothers, not more by birth, than in the 
soul of honor, courage, and patriotic devotion. Of them might 
we truly say, Ambo ornati, literati, et digniores, with the 
free rendering ; both highly accomplished, of large and varied 
literary and scientific culture, and to be counted with the 
worthier and best members of society. I vividly remember the 
admiration, amounting to something very like reverence, with 
which in my early boyhood I looked upon them, when amid 
lulls in the storm of war they returned to visit this their native 
home. Having escaped unharmed from the perils of warfare, 
in the midst of which they had been brave and faithful, they 
were long spared to serve their country in their chosen pro- 
fession, — which they adorned and exalted, — to which, while 
true to all other claims, private, social, and public, they to the 
end of their lives remained devoted. Another name I will 
venture to mention, even at the risk of trespassing on the rights 
and feelings of the living ; and I am sure, if it be a trespass, 
this whole assembly will bear me out in it, and will heartily 



35 

agree in wishing that he who bears that name may long yet 
live to be a blessing and ornament to our community. I refer, 
it is perhaps needless to say, to Colonel Thomas Aspinwall. 
Though Lancaster cannot claim him as native-born, she can 
advance a claim which he would be the last to dispute, that of 
having furnished him with his better half. Some of you, at 
least, will recollect with me his return from the fields of battle, 
when, bereft of a trusty arm, he bore himself, as he has ever 
since, with a manliness and fortitude which seemed to turn the 
loss into a grace and glory, rather than a bereavement ; and 
many there are present who have followed with approval and 
pride his subsequent career in long upholding the honor and in- 
terests of our country as its Consul-General in London, and 
have accompanied him to the shades of more retired life with 
their sincere respect and affection. 

Passing by other wars, such as those with the Indians and 
Mexico, in which natives or citizens of this place served and 
bore an honorable part, 1 come to speak more particularly of 
the share taken and service rendered by the town in our late 
tremendous civil strife. Its women, — God ever and most richly 
bless them ! — soon as the contest was fairly begun, with womanly 
intuition seized upon and comprehended the chief points at 
issue. Forthwith they armed themselves, if not in the panoply 
of war, yet in a spirit to labor and suffer, to supply the wants, 
relieve the sufferings, and courageously, with unshrinking forti- 
tude, meet and bear the trials and sacrifices, which war — and 
such a war — must necessarily occasion. Through the four 
1^ weary years of warfare, they never tired in all but angelic min- 
' istrations to alleviate its horrors and calamities. And I am 
sure they will not — and who among us without a heart of stone 
could ? — cease or tire, in relation to those who have come forth 
from it, to bind up the wounded, to be eyes to the blind and 
feet to the maimed, and liberally supply the needs of them by 
whose wounds our bleeding country has been healed and saved ; 
and yet more, to most tenderly care for and cherish the widow and 
orphan who mourn for husband and father left behind and never 
to return. That the men who remained at home Avere not idle 



36 



or indifferent in the cause, is shown by their raising large sums 
of money, and contributing nearly two hundred recruits for the 
service, who were equivalent in number to not far from a tenth 
part of the whole population of the town. Of all the sons it 
sent forth, I find no record which is not to their credit for 
bravery and faithful discharge of duty. That they did not 
shrink from danger, and were often in the thickest of the fight, 
we have painful yet glorious evidence in the thirty-nine names 
inscribed on that memorial tablet. Well and most appropriate 
is it, that the names of your fallen heroes should be imprinted 
within the building erected to their memory, away from 
the conflict and marring of the elements, apart from the 
disturbing or contaminating influences of the outer world, in 
the innermost shrine of the temple designed to commemorate 
their worth even as they are enshrined in the deepest recesses 
of our hearts. As I reviewed the list of persons, with the ages 
attached to them, I was impressed strongly with the thought, 
that it Avas not the miserable remnant of an eked-out existence 
on earth, but the flower and prime of their lives, that they had 
consecrated to their country's salvation, and for that noble end 
had freely laid them down. Most of them were under thirty 
years of age, some even under twenty, and but two exceeding 
forty years. Among them were the highly educated and refined 
who here, as elsewhere was so extensively done, resigned 
homes of luxury and comfort and happiness, abandoned for 
the time bright prospects of worldly advancement, went forth to 
encounter hardships, privations, and dangers untold and not 
fully to be described, and finally surrendered all that was dear 
in earthly enjoyment or anticipation, with their lives. It was a 
striking coincidence in the case of one such, General Francis 
Washburn, — who, when enlisting at the commencement of hos- 
tilities, being asked for what length of time he had enlisted, 
promptly replied, " For the war," — that, though he had lost a 
beloved brother in the service, he persevered in it, was in the 
battle at High Bridge, the last of the struggle, in which Lee's 
army was so intercepted on its retreat from Richmond, and so 
reduced in force as to be compelled quickly to capitulate ; was 



37 



in that distinguished for such gallantry and ability, that he was 
promoted from the rank of colonel to that of brigadier-general 
on the spot ; and there, sad to relate, when the war for the 
whole of which this then very young man had engaged, and in 
which he had attained such high distinction, was about being 
closed, he received his death-wound, and survived not many 
days. 

Many tears will be shed, and will long continue to flow, not 
only from eyes of love, of kindred, friends, and acquaintance, 
but also of strangers even, while going over that lengthened roll 
of the martyred young and brave. Sorely grievous was and still 
is their loss. Heart-rending to no few of us have been, and 
while we live always must be, thoughts of the agony and horrors 
through which they passed, and which they endured unto death, 
a cruel death. But mingled with the bitter draught, of which 
they and we were made to partake, were rich, sustaining, blessed 
solace and hope. What though some of them lie buried far 
away, or even were denied the rites of sepulture ? We may 
take to ourselves the consolation suggested by the Athenian 
orator, Pericles, who, in speaking of the heroes who fell in the 
Peloponnesian War, said, " The whole earth is the sepulchre of 
illustrious men." And surely they are illustrious, whatever the 
rank or sphere in which they may have toiled and suffered, who, 
like these our friends, at their country's call and in the hour of 
her extreme peril, sprang forward, risked their lives, and gave 
them up in her cause. If we cannot strew flowers over their 
actual graves, we can, in imagination bordering closely on reality, 
weave garlands of forget-me-nots, of laurel, of tender remem- 
brance and loving admiration, that shall reach and mark and 
chastely decorate any spots, however distant or secluded, where 
the remains of our beloved heroic defenders repose. We have, 
too, the consolatory reflection, that they did not fight or bleed 
or die in vain ; that they contributed a part, and a noble one, 
toward preserving the Union, securing and enlarging our liber- 
ties, and establishing on broad and firm foundations our perma- 
nent national prosperity. So far, indeed, as resort to the 
arbitrament of arms was inevitable, we may concede to the 



38 



vanquished the benefit of this soothing consideration, since we 
earnestly desire and hope that they may participate largely with 
the victors in the good to be derived from the victory and its 
f^rand results. Neither are we to reafard or think of these our 
friends, townsmen, countrymen, and patriots whom we here 
commemorate, as lost or dead. Lost they are to our mortal 
vision. Dead are they to the fleeting pleasures and interests of 
time and earth, — cognizant though it may be of more than even 
our Christian philosophy dreams of, and watching over the 
progress of the holy cause of Union and Freedom for which they 
died. Besides the higher and heavenly life on which we trust 
they have entered, beyond the reach of alarm, discord, and 
conflict, and where the sounds of war with its deadly strife are 
heard and known no more, they still live on earth, and, as far 
as can be predicated of any thing or being, shall in this world 
be invested with immortality. Their memory will be embalmed 
in the record of the historic page, and preserved fragrant and 
blessed so long as that shall last. They will live in the rever- 
ence, afiection, and gratitude of multitudes of hearts living and 
yet to live. Ingenuous youth and maturer age will alike look 
up to them as living exemplars of patriotic courage, valor, and 
self-sacrifice. In the very names here inscribed they will live, 
and, long as the inscription shall endure, will they impart fresh 
and strong inspirations of true love of liberty and patriotism. 
Should any who read them be tempted to swerve from the strict 
line of patriotic integrity, to plot against the union and freedom 
of the Republic, and meditate involving it in anarchy, distraction, 
and ruin, hardly could we wonder or deem a miracle to be 
wrought, were the stones on which this building is reared to 
cry out, and that cold marble suddenly to glow with fervent 
heat, and the names written thereon changed to speaking 
tongues of fire, in rebuke of such disloyalty and treason, such 
ingratitude and demoralization, not only social and civil, but of 
soul. 

You, my friends, have contributed to swell this moral power, 
I might almost say, to bring back the dead, to prolong their 
existence and salutary agency, by this memorial edifice, the 



39 

completion of which we are celebrating. Here you have set up 
a remembrancer of them which will not, cannot fail, till the 
brick and stone and marble of which it is composed crumble 
to dust. Here they, for their worthy and glorious deeds, are 
placed side by side with, and share the immortality of, those 
who by their writings have been made, so far as on earth thev 
could be, immortal. Here they are linked inseparably with a 
great and good object and work, in which the dulce et utile are 
admirably mingled, the tender and affecting in sentiment and 
memory that " smells sweet and blossoms in the dust," with 
meeting the pressing and sacred demands of a high utility. 
And what higher usefulness could we propose to ourselves than 
to enlighten, enlarge, fructify, and imbue with just, generous, 
and elevated sentiments and aspirations our own and others' 
minds ? Such is the purpose which wisely and well you have 
connected with the commemoration of your heroic dead ; and 
certain I am, that, if bending now from their seats of bliss and 
glory in cognizance of things below, they look on this scene 
with approving smiles and added happiness, not more for the 
honors bestowed on them than for the excellent ends with 
which those tributes to their valor and worth are associated, and 
are evermore to be intertwined. 

What are those ends, and how may they most effectually be 
promoted? Their direct and chief design is to furnish suitable 
books for reading to persons of all classes, the more or less in- 
formed, and of whatever age, within the limits of the town. 
Included in them is the idea, that education in the broadest 
sense is never finished, is always beginning and never ending ; 
never ended in heaven itself, and therefore clearly not to be 
confined in its scope to them who are in their teens, or them 
approaching life's meridian, in full career after its possessions 
not always gained, its joys oft missed or blighted, or those, even, 
who, with wings half-folded and drooping, are on their descent 
into the quiet vale of years ; but to be extended to and embrace 
all of every age and condition. A nobly wise and munificent 
illustration of that grand idea is afforded in the metropolis of 
our own State. There the child of the humblest abode and 



40 



scantiest means is taken by public provision as in parental arms, 
and carried through the primary, the grammar, the English high, 
or the Latin schools, till he has acquired as good a preparation 
for pursuing the common business of life, or entering on a 
collegiate course, as could elscAvhere be obtained. Then there 
is the Public Library, originally selected and arranged, and long 
watched over with loving care, by some of the first scholars of 
the land, among whom were Edward Everett and George Tick- 
nor; which, with its spacious and delightfully furnished read- 
ing-room, is open to all the inhabitants of the city indiscrimi- 
nately, who would avail themselves of its advantages ; the 
only condition or requirement being compliance with the rules 
necessary for its safety, preservation, and greatest usefulness. 
There is the Athenteum, whose library exceeds, as does the one 
just mentioned, very considerably, a hundred thousand volumes ; 
which, though incorporated and owned by individual proprietors, 
is yet, through its liberal arrangements, virtually a public insti- 
tution, — in whose privileges and treasures of literature and art, 
ancient and modern, a large proportion of the people of the 
vicinity, as well as of the city itself, are favored with the oppor- 
tunity of sharing. Next comes the Lowell Institute, founded 
and most amply endowed by one whose honored name it bears ; 
in which lectures on a great variety of subjects — embracing 
science, theology, law, history, geography, travels, the arts, 
whatever, in short, may justly be of temporary or permanent 
interest to the pQpular or more cultivated mind — are given 
gratuitously to all of the citizens, without distinction of persons, 
who after due notice seasonably apply for admission to them. 
Then there are the Institutions of Natural History and Tech- 
nology, the doors of which are thrown wide open to the public 
for observation and inquiry, and which to any desirous of pur- 
suing courses of study in them are brought within the compass 
of their ability. To crown all, there is Harvard University, 
which — though numbered among American colleges, and fore- 
most among them all by age, endowment, extensive and varied 
culture — is, in view of the quarter from which its resources 
have been derived, and its prosperity mainly sustained and 



41 

carried forward, after all, a Boston institution ; from which, I 
feel sure, no son of hers, truly loving and worthily seeking after 
knoAvledge, however restricted in pecuniary means, will for 
want of support be turned away. Let me here, by the way, note 
the fact, — for it is a noticeable one, — that of the four largest, 
and much the largest, libraries in the United States, three of 
them are located within an extent of only three miles, — two, 
the Public and Athenaeum in Boston proper, and the Harvard 
in its immediate neighborhood ; the fourth being the Astor 
Library of New York. From this simple statement, I trust it 
will appear not to savor of undue assumption, if the assertion 
be hazarded, that in no city of this or any other country is 
education in its most enlarged signification as relating to and 
essentially concerning all the people, more highly regarded or 
more liberally provided for than in the chief one of our State. 

The Commonwealth has not been unmindful of this extended 
interest, or been slow to spread over it the shield of her protecting 
and fostering care. Having at a very early period in her exist- 
ence placed the village school-house by the side of the village 
church, and from time to time passed laws to insure the intel- 
lectual and moral training of all her children, and having in 
later years invested one of her most intelligent and influential 
Boards with the duty of seeing those laws thoroughly executed, 
she, in 1851, authorized the towns to appropriate a sum equal 
to one dollar for each ratable poll, for establishing a public 
library, and a quarter of a dollar for every poll annually toward 
its support and increase. This last proportional amount was, 
not long after, doubled ; and two years since, all restriction on 
appropriations for the object was removed, and the Avhole matter 
was left to the discretion of the several towns and cities. So 
that, as the law now stands, " any town may at a legal meet- 
ing grant and vote money for the establishment, maintenance, 
or increase of a public library therein, and for erecting or 
providing suitable buildings or rooms therefor, and may receive, 
hold, and manage any devise, bequest, or donation for those 
purposes." By a law of 1867, it was "resolved that, alter the 
current year, it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Com- 

6 



42 



monwealtli to furnish each public library, organized under the 
laws of this State, on the application of the librarian thereof, 
with the annual reports, described in the General Statutes as 
the public series ; " thus wisely and beneficially providing, that 
the citizens generally should be well informed in regard to what- 
ever concerns the common weal, — to which phrase the term 
Commonwealth, as designating the whole State, has an affinity 
in both sound and substantial meaning, and from which it may 
naturally have been derived. Another enactment, passed in 
the same year, I will not omit to mention ; giving it in the 
exact words of the statute, and at the same time commending it 
to the respectful, prudent, nay, more, magnanimous, consideration 
of youths, and their elders too, here or elsewhere : " Whoever 
wilfully and maliciously writes upon, injures, defaces, tears, or 
destroys any book, picture, engraving, or statue belonging to 
any law, town, city, or other public library, shall be punished 
by a fine of not less than five dollars, nor more than one thou- 
sand dollars, for every such offence." 

Under these laws, authorized and encouraged by them, many 
of our towns have at different times, and in a steadily increasing 
number, established the institutions they were designed to foster. 
So that now the public library takes rank among our established 
institutions, and the constituted means of our intellectual, social, 
and moral development. This which we now welcome to 
its new building, to enlarged and elegant accommodations, under 
circumstances and with associations so solemn and touching, 
was founded in 1862, and has already accumulated several 
thousand volumes, with a prospect of rapid increase ; while, in 
kindred establishments throughout the State, the number of 
volumes collected cannot fall far if any short of half a million. 
When to this vast instrumentality for diffusing knowledge among 
the people, we add the nearly if not quite a million volumes 
more in social, literary, scientific, and pi'ofessional libraries, — 
to say nothing of the extensive ones strictly private, — we may 
take to ourselves new courage in the hope and trust, that good 
old Massachusetts is not falling and will not fall behind in the 
march of real and noble progress. With such means in opera- 



43 

tion, and ever cumulative, intellect will here be more and more 
disciplined, receive new impulses, make continual advance, — 

" And souls be ripened in our northern sky." 

Thus, though our climate be cold and bleak, our soil sterile, 
and our natural exports liTnited to granite and ice, and in 
regard to temperature, fertility, and central position we be far 
less favored than others or most of our sister States, yet here 
will mind grow with what it feeds on, genius be awakened and 
kindled by the air Avhich surrounds it, invention be quickened 
and informed and made triumphant, a wide, generous, elevated 
culture, physical, mental, and moral, be attained. Whether 
minds so nurtured and cultivated remain with us, or go forth to 
other more inviting and genial climes, they exert an immense and 
most salutary influence, with which all fertility of soil, or 
geniality of atmosphere, or advantages of position, are not for a 
moment to be compared. Wherever they may be, in the. great 
family of these conjoined States, or in the still greater family of 
the earth's nations, they will add to the renown and enhance 
the glory of the parent who gave them birth and nourished 
them ; for whom it may without extravagance be claimed, that, 
while yet not two centuries and a half old, no State of equal 
duration, extent, and numbers, in all modern experience, has 
exercised the sway she has over the fortunes of her own and 
other countries of the world. 

How now shall this great institution, the public provision of 
books for reading, be made most effective in advancing the good 
of the State, of society, and the individuals composing it? To 
this inquiry the first answer I have to offer is, that its manage- 
ment should be placed in the most capable hands, be they of 
men or women, or both together, that can be commanded. This 
important trust should be as far as possible committed only to 
those who, by their cast of mind, their habits and pur- 
suits, and, not least, a deep sense of its responsibility, are best 
qualified for its discharge. If, according to the well-known 
saying, the composing of the songs of a nation imply more 
power than the framing of its laws, certainly not less, rather I 
should say much more, powerful is their agency to whom, in 



44 

this reading age, and especially this community of readers, is 
confided in large degree a control over this mighty engine of 
good or ill, of weal or woe. Choose you, I would say with a 
redoubled emphasis, but very imperfectly expressing my feeling 
of the immense and all-concerning consequence of this interest, 
choose for its supervisors persons of tried fidelity, of extensive 
acquaintance with books and their adaptation to the wants of 
the minds that shall read them ; who, when those of perni- 
cious tendency are demanded, shall have the decision and moral 
courage to say No ; who, rising superior to all demarcations 
and trammels of party or sect, shall exercise an enlarged 
liberality, and encourage the most impartial inquiry into debata- 
ble subjects, the most thorough search after all knowledge ; 
who, in short, in all the regulations and details of the institu- 
tion, particularly in the selection of books and other materials 
for reading and information, will pay implicit deference to cer- 
tain fundamental principles by which I conceive all acting in 
that official capacity should uniformly be governed. 

What are those principles, or the chief among them ? The 
first I would mention is an inviolable regard i'or truth. Not 
truth in the abstract or concrete, or as we understand it. Though 
frequently issue from the press, works which so palpably violate 
the apparent fitness of things, the constitution of the universe, 
the relations of society, and man's best good, that the purveyors 
of the intellectual food of the community might, justifiably and 
without undue stretch of authority, cast them out as birds of ill- 
omen, spirits of evil, working that and nothing else, still let 
there be a generous confidence in the truth, in its power and 
ultimate prevalence. Trite as may be the saying. Truth is 
mighty and must prevail, it yet has upon it a stamp of divinity. 
I believe it, as I believe in the God of all and perfect truth. 
Cast down at times it may be, and trodden in the dust; but, 
in the soul-stirring language of our charming veteran poet, 
Bryant, — ^ 

" Truth crushed to earth shall rise again : 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, 
And dies among his worshippers." 



45 



Still we must not shut our eyes to the tremendous opposition 
truth has to encounter. Prejudice, passion, dread of innova- 
tion, pride of opinion, love of power, the spirit of secular and 
spiritual domination, always have conspired, and it may be will 
persevere to the end in conspiring, against her steady and equa- 
ble progress. 

No few — their name is legion — have there been and are 
now, who would have her walk in leading-strings, with their 
own mark on her forehead, a collar of their fashion and label 
on her neck, and bound hand and foot with chains and shack- 
les of their forging. They have seized on the press as her 
handmaid, — not always wise, discreet, or chaste, but often 
false and wicked, it must be confessed, — and have sought to 
put the latter under corresponding bonds. Among the first to 
resort to such expedients was the Romish Church. About the 
year 1550, having previously at different times and in numerous 
instances prohibited the reading of certain books, the Papal 
government issued the Index ExjJurgatorius containing a list of 
them, which has since been extended as circumstances seemed 
to demand. To such an extent has it been enlarged, that we 
may, without fear of contradiction, assert that scarcely a really 
valuable work on science and philosophy, morals and religion, 
or any other field of thought, where heresy might be avowed 
or suspected, has not come under its ban. Restriction and pro- 
hibition, however, on this point, have not by any means been 
confined to the Roman Index, or its authors, or the people over 
whom they had a controlling influence. " Even in Protestant 
countries, overseers have been appointed by law to peruse all 
writings intended for the public, and with authority to license 
or suppress, as they should think proper. Such a body of 
licensers existed, and exercised their powers in England, till a 
century and a half ago, when it was abolished by Act of Parlia- 
ment. At present, although any person in that kingdom may 
print what he pleases, he is liable to punishment if the book is 
found to contain sentiments which the law pronounces to be 
pernicious." Our own country cannot claim immunity from the 
charge of having infringed on the domain and rights of a free 



46 



press. Printing, from its first introduction here, was watched 
over with a lynx-eyed surveillance, arising in part from habits 
and associations formed and nurtured in the mother-land, and 
in no small measure from jealous guard of the principles and 
institutions, civil and religious, with which our ancestors had 
entered on a new and untried career of duty and conflict, and 
of which they were resolutely bent on making in this Western 
World full experiment. And it was not mere watching, but 
positive action and direct interposition, with pains and penalties 
annexed, that awaited wanderers or any suspected of straying 
from the true fold, and any in particular who were deemed to 
convert the blessed art of printing — the art preservative of all 
arts — into an instrument for propagating error, and therefore 
no better than a device of Satan himself. Let me cite, for in- 
stance, the case of William Pynchon, the first settler of Spring- 
field, and father of Western Massachusetts. When the colonial 
charter was about being transferred hither and to be here ad- 
ministered, he was one of the patentees, received his appoint- 
ment as magistrate and assistant at the time the other officers 
were appointed, and came over with Governor Winthrop and 
his company in 1630. That year he commenced the settlement 
of Roxbury. There he remained till 1635 ; when, from the 
glowing accounts he obtained of the Connecticut-River valley, 
of its fertility and beauty, which made it even then as now to 
be regarded the garden and Eden of New England, he pro- 
ceeded thither and fixed on Agawam — then so called, but soon 
after named Springfield for a town in Essex, England, where 
Pynchon had a mansion — as his future residence. Having 
completed his arrangements, and been joined by a goodly num- 
ber of colonists, he the following year established the settlement 
of that prosperous and charming town. Here, in this fertile 
vale, this land all but literally flowing with milk and honey, 
and yielding spontaneously as it were corn and bread and the 
fruit of the vine, he, with his co-settlers, lived and flourished in 
peace and great prosperity ; being himself respected highly 
for his abilities, his moral and religious worth, and looked to and 
reverenced by those around him as their patriarchal head. This 



47 



golden period lasted for some fourteen years, when, in an evil 
hour, at least for his own peace and comfort, he was prompted 
to publish a treatise entitled " The Meritorious Price of Man's 
Redemption," in opposition to the then-prevailing views of the 
atonement. For this heinous offence, or what was deemed 
such, he was cited before the General Court, laid under heavy 
bonds, visited at length with its censure, and comj)elled to relin- 
quish the magistracy. A compromise was subsequently effected, 
by which the obnoxious sentiments were retracted, and the cen- 
sure of the Court was withdrawn. But such was the dissatis- 
faction, disgust it may have been, with which these proceedings 
had affected Pynchon's mind, that he departed for England, 
never to return ; concluding possibly with another, that the 
tyranny of the lords bishops was more endurable than that of 
the lords brethren. To this instance allow me to add one 
more. Pichard Pierce, in 1690, worked off on his hand-press 
the first newspaper published in America. This the General 
Court took into custody, held solemn debate over its contents 
and the daring disturbance of the public peace, together with 
all the evils it involved and portended, and finally voted, that, 
as it " contained reflections of a very high nature," it was con- 
trary to law, and to be suppressed. If the spirit of this first 
American martyr to news-printing be permitted now to walk 
the earth, he may be pardoned for no little self-glorying at see- 
ing how prolific the seed of his martyrdom has been, the multi- 
tude of his progeny among us having come to be almost beyond 
numbering. Though some descent from his spiritual exaltation, 
and an essential abatement from his glorification, may be imag- 
ined, when we consider that, while he was obliged to taste the 
bitter fruits of bigotry and persecution, the saying held true, 
that the fathers ate sour grapes and the children's teeth are set 
on edge ; judging from the acerbity of spirit manifested by many 
of our news-journals, both secular and religious so called, — he 
must conclude, that the teeth of these his descendants were set 
on edge, nay, sharpened to bite and devour not only one another, 
but any who might be so unfortunate as to come within reach 
of their belligerent and voracious propensities. Might he not 



48 



also apprehend that no small proportion of them, if arraigned 
before the General Court or the regular courts of justice, would 
be compelled to plead to an indictment just the opposite of that 
on which he was convicted and condemned, namely, that their 
sheets " contained reflections " of a very low, rather than " of a 
very high, nature " ? 

Notwithstanding the restrictions to which it has been sub- 
jected, and the abuses and corruptions ingrafted upon it, the 
press, within the few centuries of its existence, has come to be 
a chief power in the world, and a source of incalculable good. 
Who will undertake to enumerate its benefits, or measure the 
extent of its influence ? Worthily to employ it is the fulfil- 
ment, intellectually, of the command from the voice of God in 
the morn of creation, which with equal appropriateness and 
felicity is inscribed on the tomb of Guttenberg, its great and 
immortal inventor, — "Let there be light." Its productions 
are spread far and wide by land and by sea. Its leaves are 
borne on all the winds of heaven, and bear, not light, knowl- 
edge, only, but healing, peace, joy, renovating and saving 
energies to all nations. Sure as the voyager is to spread his 
sails and launch upon the waves, are they to accompany him on 
his voyage, whether bound to the nearest port, or on the cir- 
cuit of the globe. Be it in the cottage or the palace, in the 
crowded city or the distant solitude, there they go, and there 
they are, to enlighten and cheer and solace. What a blessed 
ministry did they fulfil amid the horrors, privations, and suffer- 
ings of our late civil war ! Some of the most gifted pens, the 
wisest minds and truest hearts, sent forth of their abundant 
treasures books and tracts, by which to uphold and strengthen, 
and, it might be, gladden, the soldier, who had staked his all for 
Union and Liberty. I fancy now, that I see him hailing one 
of these flying messengers, with a welcome next only to that 
with which tidings from his dearly loved and longed-for home 
would be received ; and Avhether by the pine torch, or the 
struggling moonbeams, or the noonday's sun, drinking in rays 
of wisdom and comfort, amid the rugged wilds through which 
he was passing, from the best teachings of this world, and yet 



49 



more from the world in which there is no need of sun or moon, 
and in which earth's brighest Hght is melted and lost in the 
divine effulgence. 

So numerous — rather it should be said so innumerable — are 
the productions of the press, and such their world-wide diffu- 
sion, that we could scarcely conceive them to be blotted out or 
destroyed, except by a convulsion or conflagration by which the 
earth itself should be annihilated. What folly, then, to think 
of confining this mighty agent, and yet more, the truth of which 
it claims to be the great medium and expositor to the world, 
by the poor weak withes of man's weaving ! Why, it is like 
attempting to bind the sea in chains. And the inexpediency 
and injury are yet greater and far more serious than the folly 
of so doing. Says Milton, whose marvellous genius is hardly 
less resplendent in prose than in poetry, " If it come to pro- 
hibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than 
truth itself; whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared and 
dimmed with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and un- 
plausible than many errors ; even as the person is of many a 
great man slight and contemptible to see to. If the men be 
erroneous who appear to be the leading schismatics, what with- 
holds us but our sloth, our self-will, and distrust in the right 
cause, that we do not give them gentle meetings and gentle 
dismissions ; that we debate not and examine the matter 
thoroughly, with liberal and frequent audience, if not for their 
sakes, yet for our own ? Seeing no man Avho hath tasted learn- 
ing, but will confess the many ways of profiting by those, who, 
not contented with stale receipts, are able to manage and set 
forth new positions to the world. And were they but as the 
dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they 
may yet serve to polish and brighten the armory of truth, even for 
that respect they were not utterly to be cast away." Yes : our 
trust in truth and her innate force must be implicit and entire, 
as our loyalty to her should be unwavering and complete. She 
has no need of bolts and bars, framed by councils or law-makers 
or tyrants of any kind, to guard against and effectually resist the 
assaults of error. Give her but a fair field, and she is omnip- 

7 



50 

otent, whether in defence against or assailing her adversaries. 
No greater mistake has in times past been made, and even now 
is entertained, than to suppose that truth cannot stand or walk 
alone, but is so weak and frail that she must borrow such poor 
crutches and wretched safeguards as may be furnished by erring 
and more or less ignorant men. With her good right arm 
bearing aloft the sword of her own spirit, and upheld by the 
powers of reason, justice, humanity, and the reverence and love 
of her followers ; in her left hand the torch all radiant with 
her blessed light, — we may rest assured, that she will prove 
abundantly competent to fight her own battles, win her own 
laurels, while torches unnumbered and numberless shall be 
kindled at hers, and cause her sacred flame to penetrate the 
remotest ends of the earth and be universally diffused. Closely 
allied to the claim of free course for truth, is the right of impar- 
tial, unfettered investigation, of independent forming and hold- 
ing of opinions. Let this right be sacredly protected, for all 
young or old w^io shall come hither to drink of the fountains of 
knowledge. It has been well, as truly, said, " The man who gives 
up- his independence of thought and opinion is manacled, and 
will be a prisoner as long as he lives. In short, he is to his 
respective judges just what Sancho was to Don Quixote; fully 
persuaded of enchantments, giants, and adventures, which their 
masters dream of." My friends, I indulge the hope, and I am 
persuaded it is not a vain one, that many of this generation, and 
still more of the generations to follow, will come up to this as a 
consecrated place, where they may adopt or renew vows of 
fealty to the truth, resolved to follow whithersoever her steps 
shall lead, and determined to the utmost of their ability to seek 
and maintain, as the language of our civil oath expresses it. the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

Besides, in conducting an institution like this, and in order 
to its best efficiency, a watchful eye should be had to the sub- 
stantial. Constant and thorough disciimination should be ex- 
ercised in selecting and procuring works of solid value, either 
for the information they impart, or the thoughts they suggest, 
or the mental discipline they produce, for some or all of these 



51 

qualities. One of the best thinkers and scholars of our country 
remarked, that the minds he found most difficulty in grappling 
with, were the one-book men; by which he meant those who 
had confined their attention principally to a few standard works, 
till they had become familiar with and mastered their contents. 
Not that I would advocate the total exclusion from your library 
of fiction and poetry, of the light, facetious, and entertaining. 
By flashing meteor-like across the literary firmament, they may 
afford an occasional and needed diversion to the eye and the 
mind, weary with gazing at the fixed stars. Still substance, 
not surface ; the solid cube, not the superficial square ; quality, 
not quantity ; the amount digested, rather than the space gone 
over ; not the number of books read, but the knowledge and im- 
provement derived from them, — it is, which is to be kept chiefly 
and steadily in view by readers and those by whom their intel- 
lectual food is provided. Never was this caution so important 
to be heeded as in this age and at the present time. So well, 
with such force and point, has it been set forth and illustrated, 
in its application both to authors and readers, by John Stuart 
Mill, that I am induced to quote him somewhat at length. 
*' This is a reading age ; and, precisely because it is so reading 
an age, any book which is the result of profound meditation is 
perhaps less likely to be duly and profitably read than at any 
other former period. The world reads too much and too quickly 
to read well. When books were few, to get through one was a 
work of time and labor ; what was written with thought was 
read with thought, and with a desire to extract from it as much 
of the materials of knowledge as possible. But when almost 
every person who can spell, can and will write, what is to be 
done ? It is difficult to know what to read, except by reading 
every thing ; and so much of the world's business is now trans- 
acted through the press, that it is necessary to know what is 
printed, if we desire to know what is going on. Opinion weighs 
with so vast a weight in the balance of events, that ideas of no 
value in themselves are of importance from the mere circum- 
stance that they are ideas, and have a bond fide existence as 
such anywhere out of Bedlam, The wprld, in consequence, 



52 



gorges itself with intellectual food ; and, in order to swallow the 
more, holts it. Nothing is now read slowly, or twice over. 
Books are run through with no less rapidity, and scarcely leave 
a more durable impression, than a newspaper article. It is 
from this, among other causes, that so few books are produced 
of any value. The lioness in the fable boasted that, though she 
produced only one at a birth, that one was a lion ; but if each 
lion only counted for one, and each leveret for one, the advan- 
tage would all be on the side of the hare. When «very unit is 
individually weak, it is only multitude that tells. What won- 
der that the newspapers should carry all before them ? A book 
produces hardly a greater effect than an article, and there can be 
three hundred and sixty-five of these in one year. He, there- 
fore, who shoukl and would write a book, and write it in the 
proper manner of writing a book, now dashes down his first 
hasty thoughts^ or what he mistakes for thoughts, in a periodical. 
And the public is in the predicament of an indolent man, who 
cannot bring himself to apply his mind vigorously to his own 
affairs, and over whom, therefore, not he who speaks most 
wisely, but he who speaks most frequently, obtains the influ- 
ence." 

Bear in mind, let me further say to them who are to con- 
duct this institution, and them who are to receive its benefits, the 
practical bearing of the treasures collected in and diffused from 
these alcoves. Ignore not the activities of the time, that press 
as a bounden duty on all who live in it. " Action ! " thrice uttered 
as it was by the Grecian orator, when asked what were the chief 
requisites of eloquence, is the great demand of our age, in its 
every interest and pursuit. The right of him that hath a dream 
to tell his dream may not be disputed ; but the number of his 
listeners will in all likelihood be comparatively few, and his 
life-giving power small indeed. Cloistered seclusion and the 
speculations of a morbid reason and imagination have a poor 
chance and amount to little, amid the stirring energies now at 
work. Activity, bent on and struggling for a " livelier life," 
raised to the exaltation of high resolve and noblest endeavor, is 
their most marked characteristic. Active usefulness it is that 



53 



" gives to life its lustre and perfume, and we are weeds without 
it." In short, it is no time for dreaming, for airy fancies and 
speculation, for making our literature, as has been charged upon 
a large portion of it, " a mere reflection of the current senti- 
ments, and an abandonment of its mission as an enlightener and 
improver of them ; " a mere apology for inanity, inefficiency, and 
a sense of vacuity, instead of an inciter to wise designs, lofty 
aspirations, and worthy actions. 

"But one grand life, whose noble deeds 

File by like men to battle, 
Borne strongly to its glorious end 

Amid the world's vain rattle. 
Is worth a thousand promises 

Dreamed by a brain ascetic : 
Our glory is in acts, not words ; 

Deeds done, not deeds prophetic." 

Moreover, and above all, let there reside here, and from this 
place ever go forth, a moral and religious influence. In so ex- 
horting, I trust you will understand me as having no reference 
to party or sect, but a spirit soaring altogether above them. 
It is in their broadest, truest sense, that I ask you to give their 
just weight to moral and religious considerations in dispensing 
the privileges and benefits of this institution. Amid engrossing 
worldly interests, it is folly, — if not wilful blindness, it is practi- 
cal insanity, — to let the voice which can alone rightly interpret 
and direct them be drowned in the din of this lower and ma- 
terial world. Our advance in this land and age is most in 
worldly greatness; but nothing worth, if it abjure the inexpressi- 
bly higher interests of learning, virtue, and religion ; worse than 
nothing, if it leads only to wider spiritual bankruj)tcy and ruin. 
There are many — may there be many, very many more — "who, 
apprehending the true value of this material prosperity, deeply 
feel the responsibilities it imposes, and would endeavor to direct 
and use it in a manneji' demanded by the solemn teachings of 
the past, by the pressing claims of the present, by the mighty 
possibilities of the future." No investments are so secure, or 
so well deserving the name of securities, no expenditures of 
time, labor, or money, no bread cast on the waters, more sure 



54 



to return without delay unduly prolonged, or to yield a large 
and rich reward, than those devoted to the wholesome nurture 
and healthful growth of the mind. And minds, it is certain, 
cannot be sufficiently nourished, or adequately guarded and 
guided, if the essential elements of morality and religion be 
wanting. Genius, too, what wreaths can that weave for itself, 
with what garlands can its brow be adorned, fairer or more 
glorious, than the beauty and glory of its consecration to the 
highest culture of the intellectual and immortal part ? Sons 
thus consecrated it has had, some of whom who, though cut 
down like the early flower, have left a sweet and delectable 
fragrance behind ; others who have passed on to their merid- 
ian, strewing their way with culled flowers and ripe fruits ; 
others still, who, holding on to a career lengthened to its ut- 
most limit, have kept their faculties and zeal for good, bright 
and brightening to the last, just as the most brilliant hues of 
nature are seen in the departing year. 

" Piety has found 
Friencls in the friends of science ; and true prayer 
Has tiowed from lips wet witli Castaliau dew." 

So from many most eminently gifted minds and pens and hearts 
has proceeded a power, not only to amuse and cheer, but to 
enlighten, cultivate, form to virtue, prepare for usefulness and 
happiness here, and heavenly blessedness hereafter. On the 
other hand, the number, alas ! is not small of possessors of the 
finest and most brilliant powers of intellect and imagination, 
who have perverted them to pandering to base appetites and 
passions, to ministering to diseased and corrupt fancies, and 
leading them spell-bound by unnatural, monstrous, accursed 
creations ; digging pitfalls of ruin for the young and inexperi- 
enced, and working untold mischief and misery. Whoever 
lets fall one discoloring, bitter drop into the sweet, transparent 
waters of truth, innocence, and virtue, is so far an enemy to his 
race. How much more are they its foes, who, systematically, 
for selfish and wicked ends, aim, by their writings, at the corrup- 
tion and degradation of souls ; who to the mind's health and 



55 



peace are the pestilence walking in darkness, and the destruction 
wasting at noonday ! Of such the language of Edmund Burke, 
strong as it is, is none too strong, when he says, in giving his 
estimate of what is likely to result from a character chiefly de- 
pendent for fame and fortune on knowledge and talent, as Avell 
in its morbid and perverted state as in that which is sound and 
natural, " Naturally, men so formed and finished are the first gifts 
of Providence to the Avorld. But when they have once thrown 
oft' the fear of God, which was in all ages too often the case, 
and the fear of man, which is now the case, and when in that 
state they come to understand one another, and to act in corps, 
a more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell to scourge 
mankind." Be it, then, ever borne in view, that poison lurks 
in the feast of knowledge of which we are invited to partake; 
that among the plants and fruits of human wisdom, as in the 
first garden, there is a serpent, and a tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil, from which the most watchful moral discrimina- 
tion alone can save us from reaping direful consequences. For- 
tunately there is reserved to us the power of such discrimination. 
Though the issue of immoral and pernicious publications may 
not, except in most flagrant instances, be restrained, we are not 
obliged to purchase or read or circulate them. Our part it is, — 
would that we might invariably choose and be true to it ! — to 
cultivate purity of taste, and exercise sound moral judgment, in 
regard to whatever works we select for our own or commend to 
others' reading ; seeing to it, that, while the intellect is informed 
and trained to wisdom, the heart is made and kept right, its 
sensibilities chastened and regulated, its aff"ections attached to 
and its impulses directed toward the worthiest objects, the heart 
and conscience kindled and made tenderly, uniformly alive to 
every moral and religious obligation. Thus are the greatest 
enlargement of mind and elevation of character wisely and 
most effectually sought; for — 

" It is the heart, and not the brain, 
Which to the highest doth attain." 

In dedicating, then, this edifice to the memory of our de- 



56 



parted brave, and the instruction of the living, we consecrate it, 
first of all and over all, to the God of both the dead and living, 
and to the everlasting, all-important interests of truth, virtue, 
and pure religion. While, we dedicate it to the names and 
services of those here specially mentioned, as we do most 
solemnly and aifectionately, Ave yet bear in grateful remembrance 
all the wise, patriotic, and good who have preceded them here, 
and in the light of whose example they went forth to do and 
to die in their country's cause. At the same time that we dedi- 
cate it, as now we would, with all the solemnity becoming 
the sacred interests involved, to the other main purpose of 
its erection, — that of the diffusion of knowledge by books 
and reading among all of every class and age, — I delight 
to advert to antecedents, and to recall associations, which 
seem to constitute the present occasion, as tending to the fulfil- 
ment of that purpose, but a consummation in entire accordance 
with the past history of this place. A literary air has from its 
first settlement pervaded it. Most of its professional men have 
been liberally educated, and some of them have been eminent 
for their classical and scientific attainments. Among the teach- 
ers of its schools have been Warren, Channing, Sparks, Proctor, 
Emerson, Miles, Carter, Russel, Wood, Fletcher, — all eminent 
for scholarship, — with others that might be named. Of their 
pupils were Frederick Wilder, dearly loved and early lost, 
whose name I can never — for friendship's sake alone — utter 
without deep emotion ; whom I hesitate not to pronounce with- 
out a peer, for the combination of intellectual and moral quali- 
ties, in the seven classes with which I was connected in Harvard 
University ; Horatio Greenough, also, the distinguished Ameri- 
can sculptor, who in youth gave unmistakable indications of the 
peculiar talent which shone so conspicuously in his subsequent 
career; and many besides, who, in the professions, in literary and 
scientific pursuits, in the walks of business, of civil and political 
life, have been eminently useful and honored, and at least have 
done no discredit even to such teachers. Writers, too, and 
authors we have had, worthy of special and honorable mention. 
Mrs. Rowlandson's "Removes," — the narrative given by one 



57 

of the earliest settlers and the first minister's wife, from the day 
of her capture amid all the horrors of fire, wounds, and death, 
which she touchingly designates " the dolefulest day that ever 
mine eyes saw," to the time of her deliverance from wretched 
and almost hopeless captivity, — while deeply interesting in itself, 
is regarded by competent judges to be one of the most authen- 
tic and accurate accounts of the character, habits, and modes of 
life of the aboriginal inhabitants of this country. Coming 
down to a much later period, there was the Hillar and Cleve- 
land family residing, in patriarchal union, in the venerable, and 
for its time stately, mansion, around which cluster the buildings 
of that excellent institution, the State Industrial School for 
Girls. At the 'head of that family, as pictured by my earlier 
recollections, was Joseph Hillar, an officer of the Revolution, a 
friend of Washington, and in token of his confidence appointed 
by him first Collector, under the Federal Constitution, of the 
port of Salem and Beverly ; a man of high principle and bear- 
ing, the refined, accomplished, Christian gentleman. Rarely, 
if ever, — and I appeal to some present better capable than myself 
of judging, to bear me out in the assertion, — has such an amount 
of talent, cultivation, and varied attainment been concentrated 
under a single family roof. Included within that domestic 
circle were four sisters, all of rich and various culture, two of 
whom made valuable contributions to the current literature ; 
also the husbands of the latter, both intelligent and well in- 
formed, entertaining and agreeable companions, of great energy 
aiid wide experience, having travelled or navigated over a large 
portion of the globe ; one of them being the author of an 
interesting and remarkable narrative of his voyages and com- 
mercial adventures in which he had borne a principal part, 
and likewise the father of Henry R. Cleveland, whose literary 
remains attest his well-earned distinction as a man of taste, a 
writer and scholar. Then there was Caroline Lee Hentz, whose 
warm heart, fervent soul, and attractive graces here had their 
birth and early nurture ; Avhose thoughts and affections, notwith- 
standing long distance and absence, were always to the end of 
her life strongly and fondly drawn hither. Her mature life 



58 



was mostly passed in our Southern States, where her tales and 
romances by the power of vivid description, the florid style and 
luxuriant imagination, which marked them, found a congenial 
atmosphere, and gained a popularity second perhaps to none of 
the kind, or indeed of any kind, in that region. Another I 
must not in justice to yourselves, or the place, or a deservedly 
acquired reputation, omit to refer to, who, though not a native, 
not strictly to the manor born, is by association and residence 
one with you and us ; whose modesty yet, as we are favored 
with her presence, I should fear to offend by pronouncing her 
name ; and I will therefore content myself with simply ex- 
pressing the wish, to which I am sure of a general and hearty 
response, that all the wares brought to the literary market might 
be superior as hers. But I go one step further. I claim for 
you a share in the origin and influence of the works of some 
who have had here a temporary abode and occupation, but 
whose interest and attachments never forsook, rather have been 
increased, warmed, mellowed, by time, in this scene of their 
early teachings and labors. So was it with William Ellery 
Channing, the eloquent divine, the far-famed writer, the en- 
lightened and devoted philanthropist. So it was with Jared 
Sparks, who, to the credit lastingly to be accorded to him for 
the offices he filled and the works he did so well, will be super- 
added in all coming time the title of biographer par excellence 
of Washington. So it is — long may he be spoken of in the 
present tense — with another, with whose attendance we are hon- 
ored to-day, George B. Emerson, who, having with unwearied 
fidelity and signal success been a teacher of one generation ; 
having contributed greatly to elevate his profession, to enlarge 
its sphere, and place it in importance and the public esteem by 
the side of what are termed the learned professions ; vying 
still with the most forward in devising and inculcating the best 
methods of promoting that all-concerning interest, education, 
and besides being always ' ready to enter, heart and hand, into 
any enterprises and the upholding of any institutions by which 
our race might be exalted and blessed, — has, moreover, by his 
writings laid the community under weighty obligation ; and in 



59 



his treatise on arboriculture, if he has not, like the fabled music 
of Orpheus and his lyre, drawn the groves after him, he draws 
from them rich lessons and stores of science, taste, and practical 
wisdom. 

With such associations, derived from the past and present, 
which may justly be regarded in themselves favoring auspices 
and bright auguries, we may turn with animating hope and 
confidence to the future of this hall and this institution, now con- 
secrated at once to genuine patriotism and good learning. Most 
cordially, my friends, do I congratulate you on the work so well 
begun, and carried to such completion. Long may you live to 
witness and enjoy the benefits thence accruing, that are destined, 
I trust, to flow down and be diff'used through uncounted genera- 
tions ! If that is too much to anticipate for each, — and all of you 
must, in the order of nature, at no very remote period, have 
passed from these earthly scenes, — it is pleasant, very, to think 
of the instruction, the impulses and incentives to virtuous living, 
the solace and delights, which many of every condition and age 
may partake and enjoy, when you that have reared these walls 
and spread this intellectual banquet shall be dwellers in the 
region of spiritual, heavenly, and ever-progressive illumination. 
Walter Scott, in that combination of penetrating discernment 
and real pathos wrought at times by his magic pen, represents 
Dumbiedikes as saying on his death-bed, in his parting advice 
to his son, " Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be 
aye sticking in a tree'; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're 
sleeping. My father tauld me sae forty years sin', but I ne'er 
fand time to mind him." May the tree you have here planted, 
evermore, whether your eyes behold it, or are closed in the sleep 
that in this world knows no waking, be spreading and strength- 
ening its roots, sending out branches clad in foliage of living 
green, and laden with fruit, fair to the eye, pleasant to the taste, 
of which whoever tastes shall live, and not die, surely not die 
that worst of deaths, the only one we need to dread, that of the 
mind ; but from which the soul may derive continually increasing 
light, health, peace, and joy. Let us, furthermore, hope and 
trust that while the call issuing from these portals, made tender 



60 



and affecting by these memorials of martyrs for their country's 
good, shall sound out to this and succeeding ages, clothing itself in 
the language of sacred writ, — Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come 
ye to the waters : come ye, buy and eat, without money and 
without price, — it may be responded to heartily and fully by 
multitudes who shall here not only drink deep of the fountains 
of human knowledge, but shall imbibe largely of the wisdom 
that is from above, and thither leads the way. 



ODE. 



The purple haze of summei' days 
Lies low above the sleeping hills ; 
Beneath the Sun's warm touch, the Earth 
To her deep centre throbs and thrills ; 
And Peace above the smiling land 
Her gentle benediction breathes ; 
And round the sheathed and rusty bi'and, 
The summer-blooming laurel wreathes. 

Seven times the earth her solemn course 
Has wheeled around the central sphere, — 
Seven times the change from bud to leaf 
Has marked the noon-day of the year, — 
Since that wild spring-time, when the blast 
That kindled all the land to flame, 
With cloud and thunder, o'er us passed, 
And woke us from our dream of shame ! 



II. 



We had dwelt with the heroes of mythical ages, — 
The gods on Olympus, the men of old Rome, 

The chivalrous knights of King Arthur's romances. 
The paladins clustered round Charlemagne's throne. 



62 



We thought that all chivalry, valor, and beauty 
Had melted like dew, in the noon of our time ; 

That the clang of the loom and the beat of the piston 
Now made for the world its most musical chime. 

Like the sound of a trumpet, the voice of an angel, 

Like the light that around the transfigured once shone, 

Came the noise of the battle, the glare of its bale-fires : 
We sprang from our slumbers ; our visions had gone ! 

We turned from the past with its glooms and its shadows ; 

The light of the present shone full on our brow, 
Flushed crimson with shame, at the thought that its grandeur 

Had never been felt by our spirits till now ! 

We saw that whatever of truth and of valor, 

Whatever of glory, past ages can claim. 
Still shines in the laurels that garland the heroes 

Who fought the good fight in fair Liberty's name ! 

Though the knights for their ladies have run their last tourney. 
True knights at the service of freedom had we ; 

Though their helmets be doffed, and their war-cries be silent. 
Our rifle-balls sang the shrill song of the free ! 

So the dark years of war and the wild days of battle 

We welcomed, and knew that truth grappled with wrong ; 

Bade farewell to the olive of peace for a season, 

Made the blood-dripping laurel the tlieme of our song ! — 

Until we saw, above the rescued land, 

Shine in the sky, the golden bow of peace ; 
And hailed the omen, — promising at last, 

From all the woes of war a swift release. 

III. 

How dream-like seemed those fever days of war ! 
How cool the breath from arid battle-plains ! 
The cannon-echoes sound but faint and i'ar, 
And dim have grown the crimson banner stains. 



63 



Alas ! how little trace on earth or sky, 
The hurrying past, however stormy, leaves ! 
The broken branches fall to earth and die, 
But not one element in nature grieves. 

The war-scorched plains where grappled hostile bands, — 
Where nameless heroes fought, and fighting, died, — 
The spring-time clothes again with genial hands, 
And hides the wave-marks of the battle-tide. 

Thanks for the kindly years 

That rob us of our tears, — 
That heal the wounded heart and soothe the pangs of sorrow ; 

That leave our joy and pi'ide 

In our heroes glorified ; 
But from the night of mourning keep their promise of the morrow. 



IV. 

Still lives the memory of our fallen brave, 
Though tattered banners gather silent dust. 
And fades the crimson stain from land and wave, 
And sword and cannon moulder into rust ! 

We walk the weary paths of wordly life. 
Uncertain of the worth of all we win, — 
Theirs the long rest that follows glorious strife. 
The peace that dawns upon the battle's din, 

For those who fight upon the side of God, 
And, dying, know they do not die in vain. 
But see, up-looking from the bloody sod. 
The martyr's aureole crown the battle-plain ! 

Let the storied marbles rise 

Till they touch the arching skies, — 

Let brush and chisel tell, to the world, the thrilling story 
Of the men who died for truth. 
And the golden hopes of youth 

For the love of freedom yielded, and bartered life for glory ! 



64 



V. 



Here in the sacred heart 

Of the dear old pilgrim land, 

Whose heroes wrought their part 
To save their father's land, — 

Where the streams and woods are vocal 
With the voice of ancient years, 
nd hills and fields are hallowed 
By the pilgrim's blood and tears, — 

With sober hearts and liumble. 
We come to own our debt, 

To the hero-sons of heroes, 

Who proved that there lingers yet 

Some trace of the ancient spirit, 
That fired the men of old ; 

That, under our sordid drosses, 
Still burns the virgin gold ! 

Within these walls shall echo 

The voices heard of yore, 
Which the truth revealed from heaven. 

To the waiting people bore, 

Of bards, whose lips were touched 
With a spark of heavenly fire, 

And who struck, with prophet-fingers, 
The poet's ringing lyre, — 

Which told of the deeds of heroes, 
Whose blood redeemed the earth 

From the bonds of old oppression, 
Of the throes of Freedom's birth, 

Of the dawn of civic order. 

Of the victories of peace, 
Of the promise of that future, 

When the days of war shall cease. 



65 

But the sculptured names above 

Shall tell their nobler tale, 
Through clay and night the same, 

Beneath the starlight pale, 

Or when round the western mountain 

The evening glory lingers, 
And paints the pallid marble 

With sunset's rosy fingers L 

VI. 

This pile your hands have builded 

Is built for time alone : 
The rust shall eat the iron. 

The moss shall crust the stone, 
The massy walls shall crumble. 

And sink in dust away. 
When the fingers of the ages 

Have wrought their sure decay ; 

But a deed that is done for freedom, — 

A blow that is struck for truth, — 
Shall live with the souls of men. 

In a self-renewing youth ! 
In the golden book of Heaven, 

The sacred names are written, 
Of the heroes and the martyrs 

Who the hosts of sin have smitten ! 
No need of our poor endeavors : 

Their work was its own reward ; 
The seed shall grow, that they planted 

On the bloody battle-sward. 
And the harvest shall be gathered 

In the good time of the Lord ! 

When the march of the solemn years 
Hath brought us to their goal. 
The precious blood and tears, 
Wrung from each hero-soul, 
9 



66 



Shall be paid in flowing measure, full and free : 

For virtue bringeth peace ; 

And the wrongs and sins of old 

Shall pass like troubled dreams ; 

And the shock and crash of arms, 

And the battle's wild alarms. 

In God's own time shall cease ; 

And the light of his holy law. 

With its mingled love and awe. 
Shall shine o'er all the earth, and light the solemn sea ! 



APPENDIX. 



Prepared by Rev. George M. Bartol, and Extracted in Part from the 
" Clinton Courant " of June 20, 1868. 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MEMORIAL HALL IX 
LANCASTER, June 17, 1868. 

At a meeting of the citizens of the town, held in March, 1867, it was 
voted to appropi-iate $5,000 for the purpose of building a Memorial 
Hall, provided a like amount should be raised by subscription. The 
additional $5,000 was more than made up, several of the citizens of the 
town contributing sums ranging from $500 to $1,000. The matter was 
intrusted to a committee of seven, consisting of the following gentle- 
men : Nathaniel Thayer, Esq., Rev. G. M. Bartol, Dr. J. L. S- 
Thompson, Henry Wilder, Jacob Fisher, Quincy Whitney, and 
Maj. E. M. Fuller. Of this committee, the selectmen have been mem- 
bers ex officio. 

The building, which is situated in the rear of the town common, be- 
tween the parish church and the town hall, has been completed at a 
cost of $25,000 ; the balance, above appropriation and subscription, hav- 
ing been contributed by Nathaniel Thayer, Esq., a native of Lan- 
caster, by whose munificence the library had been already very largely 
endowed. The style is classic, of the so-called Eenaissance ; the ma- 
terial being granite, brown freestone, and brick. Dimensions: b&\ by 
36^ feet. The mason-work was done by Fairbanks & Frazer. of Clin- 
ton, and the wood-work by Robert Black, Esq., of Marlborough, 

Inside, the walls and ceilings are frescoed in the higliest style of the 
art, by Brazier, of Boston. The entire arrangement of the building re- 
flects much credit on the architects, Messrs. Ryder and Harris, also of 
Boston. 



68 



Immediately above the porch, and architecturally connected with it, 
is a recessed panel or niche of freestone, bearing in bas-relief an urn 
surrounded by a wreath of oak-leaves, draped in mourning, and resting 
upon a pedestal of bound staves, representing the Union intact. On the 
pedestal appears the national coat of arms, and against it lean a mus- 
ket and swoi'd. 

The entry bears on either wall a marble tablet ; that on the right thus 
inscribed : — 

1653-1868. 

THIS EDIFICE 

TO THE SOLE HONOR AND MEMOKT, UNDER GOD, 

OF THOSE BRAVE AND LOYAL VOLUNTEERS, 

NATIVE OR RESIDENT OF LANCASTER, 

WHO FELL MAINTAINING THE NATION'S CAUSE 

IN THE BATTLES OF THE GREAT REBELLION, 

IS ERECTED ON THE VERGE OF A FIELD 

LONG USED BY THE INHABITANTS AS A MILITARY MUSTER-GROUND, 

AND NEAR THE FOURTH BUILDING 

OF THE town's FIRST CHURCH, INSTITUTED 1653. 



" The grass witlieretb, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord 
endureth for ever." 



WITHIN ITS WALLS THE PUBLIC RECORDS OF THE TOWN, 

WASTED BY FIRE AND OTHER ACCIDENTS, 

AND ALSO THE TOWN'S LIBRARY, FOUNDED IN 1862, 

ARE NOW MORE SAFELY THAN HERETOFORE DEPOSITED. 



" Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; except the Lord 
keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." 

The tablet on the left has this inscription : — 

" The memorial of virtue is immortal. When it is present, men take example at it; 
and when it is gone, they desire it." 

THIS BUILDING, 

BEGUN AND COMPLETED A.D. 1867-8, 

IS DEDICATED, BY THEIR FELLOW- CITIZENS, 

TO THE SACRED MEMORY OF THOSE MEN OF LANCASTER 

WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THE INTEGRITY OF THE REPUBLIC 

IN THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865. 

WE CAN NEVER BE DEATHLESS TILL WE DIE. 

IT IS THE DEAD WIN BATTLES — NO: THE BRAVE 

DIE NEVER. BEING DEATHLESS, THEY BUT CHANGE 

THEIR COUNTRY'S VOWS FOR MORE, — THEIR COUNTRY'S HEART. 



69 



A door at the right conducts us into a fire-proofroom, 13 by 19 feet, 
and 12 feet in height, designed for the use of town otlicers. Tlie floor 
is laid on iron beams with brick arches; the ceiling is simihirly con- 
structed. The room is furnished with iron doors and shutters, and 
convenient cases are arranged at one end for records and papers. 

On the left of the vestibule is the ofHce-room of the librarian, 16 by 
13 feet, and 12 feet in height. This room connects, by means of a con- 
veniently furnished ante-room, with the main room of the building. 

The twofold design of the building — as a library and as a Memorial 
Hall — everywhere appears. The main hall is constructed in the form 
of an octagon, the distance from side to side being 34 feet. The height 
from the floor to the skylight is 2G feet. Directly in front of the en- 
trance-door, and on the farther side of the room, is a large marble tab- 
let, bearing the names of the soldiers, citizens, or natives of the town 
who died in the war, arranged in the order of date of decease, with 
age. Upon the upper part of the tablet appears the following: — 

THAT OUR POSTERITY MAY ALSO KNOW THEM, 
AND THE CHILDItEN THAT AKE YET UNBORN. 

Then follows the list of thirty-nine deceased soldiers, as below: — 

George Wriglit Cutler, Oct. 21, 1861. — 23. 
Willard Raymond Lawrence, Oct. 21, 1861. — 28. 
James Gardner Warner, Oct. 21, 1861. — 31. 
Luther Gerry Tm-ner, Nov. 1, 1861. — 24. 
Franklin Hawkes Fanisworth, May 31, 1862. — 19. 
James Burke, Sept. 1, 1862. — 26. 
Robert Roberts Moses, Oct. 3, 1862.-26. 
Ebenezer Waters Richards, Dec. 13, 1862. — 37. 
George Lee Thurston, Dec. 15, 1862. — 31. 
Henry Maynard Putney, April 28, 1863. — 20. 
David Wilder Jones, May 3, 1863.-46. 
James Dillon, May 10, 1863. — 26. 
Charles Timothy Fairbanks, June 19, 1863. — 27. 
Henry Albert Cutler, July 9, 1863. — 19. 
Oscar Frary, July 28, 1863.-27. 
Stephen Adams Keyes, Aug. 10, 1863. — 19. 
Walter Andrew Brooks, Aug. 22, 1863. — 20. 
John Patrick Wise, March 15, 1864. — 19. 
John Chickering Haynes,'March 19, 1864.-30. 
Stephen Wesley Gray, April 4, 1864. — 32. 
James Andrew Bridge, May 15, 1864. — 21. 
Henry Jackson Parker, May 15, 1864. — 28. 
Sumner Russell Kilburn, May 16, 1864. — 21. 
Solon Whiting Cliaplin, June 5, 1864. — 40. 



70 



William Dustin Carr, June 20, 1864. — 40. 
Samuel Mirick Bowman, July 26, 1864. — 28. 
Caleb Wood Sweet, Aug. 8, 1864. — 23. 
Edward Richmond Washburn, Sept. 5, 1864. — 28. 
Horatio Elisha Turner, Sept. 8, 1864. — 20. 
William Schumacher, Sept. 13, 1864. — 22. 
Frederic Fordyce Nourse, Sept. 13, 1864.-22. 
George Walton Divoll, Sept. 21, 1864.-37. 
John Louis Moeglin, Sept. 28, 1864. — 53. 
Oren Hodgman, Sept. 30, 1864.-21. 
Luke OUis, Oct. 13, 1864.-21. 
Fordyce Horan, Nov. 9, 1864.-21. 
Francis Henry Fairbanks, Jan. 4, 1865. — 30. 
Edward Russell Joslyn, April 10, 1865.-21. 
Francis AVashburn, April 22, 1865. — 26.* 

Beneath the tablet, and cut in gilt on the walnut base, are the 
words, — 

IN THE SIGHT OF THE UNWISE THEY SEEMED TO DIE, 

AND THEIR DEPAKTUKE WAS TAKEN FOK MISERY, 

AND THEIR GOING FROM US TO BE UTTER DESTRUCTION; 

BUT THEY ARE IN PEACE. 

Above this tablet is the " war window," of stained glass, on which 
appear the Holy Bible and military emblems, as sword, helmet, shield, 
victor's wreath, and national flag. 

Directly above the centre of the hall is a domed skylight, or " peace 
window," also of stained glass, with this sentence in the border, in the 
old-English character : — 

"(JTlirg sljall beat tfjftr stoovtis into plotigljsfiarrs anti tfjctr spravs into 
prwning-Ijooks; ncttljcr sf)aU tIjES learn tear ang movt ; " 

and representing the breaking away of tlie clouds of war, and the de- 
scent of the dove with the olive-branch of peace. 

At the springing of this dome is the following motto, also in old-Eng- 
lish letter : — 

" Srijc tntti) cntiuvftlj anti is alinngs strong, i-t librtij anli conqucrctfj for 
cbcrmovE, tijc kingtom, potocr, anti majcstg of all ages." 

On the walls of the hall, above and below, shelves are arranged for 
the use of the library, on the peg system of the British IMuseum. A 
gallery runs round seven sides of the room, witli a li^ht iron railing, 

* Albert Gilmsin Hunting, deceased June 25, 1862, iEt. 19, volunteered at Holliston; 
but his family removed directly afterwards to Lancaster, to which town he belonged 
when inu.stered into service. 



71 



and sustained by iron columns. The estimated capacity is 25,000 
volumes. 

A flight of stairs leads from the vestibule to rooms directly above 
the fire-proof and office rooms, at the west end of the building ; also to 
the galleries. The north room is designed as a general reading-room. 
Folding doors connect this with the south or " cabinet room." This 
room is to be devoted to natural-history collections, and is furnished 
witli elegant and convenient black-walnut cases, drawers, and cup- 
boards. Arrangements are also made for mineralogical and ornitho- 
logical specimens, &c., &c. 

The entire interior is elegantly finished in black walnut, and is to be 
warmed by furnaces in the basement, and lighted by gas. 

Dedication. 

Appi'opriate dedicatory services were held last "Wednesday, the 
17th inst. ; this date being the ninety-third anniversary of the battle 
of Bunker Hill. 

The services commenced at about 2^ o'clock, Nathaniel Thayer, 
Esq., presiding. The order of exercises was as follows : — 

I. Statement of Executive Committee. 
II. Music by the Band. 

III. Reading of Scriptures, by Rev. G. R. Leavitt. 

IV. Dedicatory Prayer, by Rev. G. M. Bartol. 
V. Music by the Band. 

VI. Address, by Rev. Christopher T. Thayer, of Boston. 
VII. Music by tlie Band. 
VIII. Ode, by H. F. Buswell, Esq., of Canton. 
IX. Prayer and Benediction, by Rev. Dr. Whittemore. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 078 666 4 # 



